Project Gutenberg's Christian Science, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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Title: Christian Science
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: August 19, 2006 [EBook #3187]
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTIAN SCIENCE ***
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CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
by Mark Twain
PREFACE
Book I of this volume occupies a quarter or a third of the volume,
and consists of matter written about four years ago, but not hitherto
published in book form. It contained errors of judgment and of fact.
I have now corrected these to the best of my ability and later knowledge.
Book II was written at the beginning of 1903, and has not until
now appeared in any form. In it my purpose has been to present a
character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own acts and words
solely, not from hearsay and rumor; and to explain the nature and scope
of her Monarchy, as revealed in the Laws by which she governs it, and
which she wrote herself.
MARK TWAIN
NEW YORK. January, 1907.
BOOK I CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
"It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that
a Voice has gone crashing through space with such
placid and complacent confidence and command."
CHAPTER I
VIENNA 1899.
This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the
Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and
broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was
found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the
nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed
farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning
little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored
flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room,
separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the
front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the
manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring
that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables
a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.
There was a village a mile away, and a horse doctor lived there, but
there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a
surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was
summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and
could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time,
and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter,
there was no hurry, she would give me "absent treatment" now, and come
in the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and
comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me.
I thought there must be some mistake.
"Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?"
"Yes."
"And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?"
"Yes."
"And struck another one and bounced again?"
"Yes."
"And struck another one and bounced yet again?"
"Yes."
"And broke the boulders?"
"Yes."
"That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn't you
tell her I got hurt, too?"
"I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but
an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock
to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look
like a hat-rack."
"And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was
nothing the matter with me?"
"Those were her words."
"I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with
sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did
she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the
aid of abstract science the confirmations of personal experience?"
"Bitte?"
It was too large a contract for the Stubenmadchen's vocabulary; she
couldn't call the hand. I allowed the subject to rest there, and asked
for something to eat and smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket
to pile my legs in; but I could not have any of these things.
"Why?"
"She said you would need nothing at all."
"But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate pain."
"She said you would have these delusions, but must pay no attention to
them. She wants you to particularly remember that there are no such
things as hunger and thirst and pain.''
"She does does she?"
"It is what she said."
"Does she seem to be in full and functionable possession of her
intellectual plant, such as it is?"
"Bitte?"
"Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up?"
"Tie her up?"
"There, good-night, run along, you are a good girl, but your mental
Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy conversation. Leave me to my
delusions."
CHAPTER II
It was a night of anguish, of course--at least, I supposed it was, for it
had all the symptoms of it--but it passed at last, and the Christian
Scientist came, and I was glad She was middle-aged, and large and bony,
and erect, and had an austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak
and was a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I was
eager to get to business and find relief, but she was distressingly
deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and uncoupled her upholsteries one
by one, abolished the wrinkles with a flirt of her hand, and hung the
articles up; peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out
of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended into it
without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She said, with pity but without
passion:
"Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its
dumb servants."
I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she
detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no
use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence,
she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I
felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms.
"One does not feel," she explained; "there is no such thing as feeling:
therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent is a
contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the
mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it."
"But if it hurts, just the same--"
"It doesn't. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of
reality. Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannot hurt."
In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion
of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said
"Ouch!" and went tranquilly on with her talk. "You should never allow
yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you
are feeling; you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit others
to talk about disease or pain or death or similar nonexistences in your
presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty
imaginings." Just at that point the Stuben-madchen trod on the cat's
tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity. I asked, with
caution:
"Is a cat's opinion about pain valuable?"
"A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from mind only; the lower
animals, being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind, opinion is impossible."
"She merely imagined she felt a pain--the cat?"
"She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is an effect of mind; without
mind, there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination."
"Then she had a real pain?"
"I have already told you there is no such thing as real pain."
"It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the
cat. Because, there being no such thing as a real pain, and she not
being able to imagine an imaginary one, it would seem that God in His
pity has compensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion
usable when her tail is trodden on which, for the moment, joins cat and
Christian in one common brotherhood of--"
She broke in with an irritated--
"Peace! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels nothing. Your empty
and foolish imaginings are profanation and blasphemy, and can do you an
injury. It is wiser and better and holier to recognize and confess that
there is no such thing as disease or pain or death."
"I am full of imaginary tortures," I said, "but I do not think I could be
any more uncomfortable if they were real ones. What must I do to get rid
of them?"
"There is no occasion to get rid of them since they do not exist. They
are illusions propagated by matter, and matter has no existence; there is
no such thing as matter."
"It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree elusive; it
seems to slip through, just when you think you are getting a grip on it."
"Explain."
"Well, for instance: if there is no such thing as matter, how can matter
propagate things?"
In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were
any such thing as a smile.
"It is quite simple," she said; "the fundamental propositions of
Christian Science explain it, and they are summarized in the four
following self-evident propositions:
1. God is All in all.
2. God is good. Good is Mind
3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter
4. Life, God, omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.
"There--now you see."
It seemed nebulous; it did not seem to say anything about the difficulty
in hand--how non-existent matter can propagate illusions I said, with
some hesitancy:
"Does--does it explain?"
"Doesn't it? Even if read backward it will do it."
With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backwards.
"Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omnipotent God life matter
is nothing all being Spirit God Mind is Good good is God all in All is
God. There do you understand now?
"It--it--well, it is plainer than it was before; still--"
"Well?"
"Could you try it some more ways?"
"As many as you like; it always means the same. Interchanged in any way
you please it cannot be made to mean anything different from what it
means when put in any other way. Because it is perfect. You can jumble
it all up, and it makes no difference: it always comes out the way it was
before. It was a marvelous mind that produced it. As a mental tour de
force it is without a mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and
the occult."
"It seems to be a corker."
I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could stop it.
"A what?"
"A--wonderful structure--combination, so to speak, of profound thoughts
--unthinkable ones--um--"
"It is true. Read backward, or forward, or perpendicularly, or at any
given angle, these four propositions will always be found to agree in
statement and proof."
"Ah--proof. Now we are coming at it. The statements agree; they agree
with--with--anyway, they agree; I noticed that; but what is it they prove
I mean, in particular?"
"Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove:
"1. GOD--Principle, Life,
Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do you get that?"
"I--well, I seem to. Go on, please."
"2. MAN--God's universal idea, individual, perfect, eternal. Is it
clear?"
"It--I think so. Continue."
"3. IDEA--An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding.
There it is--the whole sublime Arcana of Christian Science in a nutshell.
Do you find a weak place in it anywhere?"
"Well--no; it seems strong."
"Very well There is more. Those three constitute the Scientific
Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have the Scientific Definition of
Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST DEGREE: Depravity I. Physical-Passions and
appetites, fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge,
sin, disease, death."
"Phantasms, madam--unrealities, as I understand it."
"Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing. I. Moral-Honesty,
affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance. Is it clear?"
"Crystal."
"THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. I. Spiritual-Faith, wisdom, power,
purity, understanding, health, love. You see how searchingly and
co-ordinately interdependent and anthropomorphous it all is. In this
Third Degree, as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal
mind disappears."
"Not earlier?"
"No, not until the teaching and preparation for the Third Degree are
completed."
"It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of Christian
Science effectively, and with the right sense of sympathy and kinship,
as I understand you. That is to say, it could not succeed during the
processes of the Second Degree, because there would still be remains of
mind left; and therefore--but I interrupted you. You were about to
further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions and
disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is very interesting;
go on, please."
"Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind disappears.
Science so reverses the evidence before the corporeal human senses as to
make this scriptural testimony true in our hearts, 'the last shall be
first and the first shall be last,' that God and His idea may be to us
--what divinity really is, and must of necessity be all-inclusive."
"It is beautiful. And with what exhaustive exactness your choice and
arrangement of words confirm and establish what you have claimed for the
powers and functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably
produce only temporary absence of mind; it is reserved to the Third to
make it permanent. A sentence framed under the auspices of the Second
could have a kind of meaning--a sort of deceptive semblance of it
--whereas it is only under the magic of the Third that that defect would
disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree that contributes
another remarkable specialty to Christian Science--viz., ease and flow
and lavishness of words, and rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must
be a special reason for this?"
"Yes--God--all, all--God, good God, non-Matter, Matteration, Spirit,
Bones, Truth."
"That explains it."
"There is nothing in Christian Science that is not explicable; for God is
one, Time is one, Individuality is one, and may be one of a series, one
of many, as an individual man, individual horse; whereas God is one, not
one of a series, but one alone and without an equal."
"These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to know more. How does
Christian Science explain the spiritual relation of systematic duality to
incidental deflection?"
"Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul and body--as
astronomy reverses the human perception of the movement of the solar
system--and makes body tributary to the Mind. As it is the earth which
is in motion, While the sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise
one finds it impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so
the body is but the humble servant of the restful Mind, though it seems
otherwise to finite sense; but we shall never understand this while we
admit that soul is in body, or mind in matter, and that man is included
in non-intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal; and man
coexists with and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the Altogether,
and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-Mind, Mind-Soul, Love,
Spirit, Bones, Liver, one of a series, alone and without an equal."
"What is the origin of Christian Science? Is it a gift of God, or did it
just happen?"
"In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its powers are from
Him, but the credit of the discovery of the powers and what they are for
is due to an American lady."
"Indeed? When did this occur?"
"In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and disease and death
disappeared from the earth to return no more forever. That is, the
fancies for which those terms stand disappeared. The things themselves
had never existed; therefore, as soon as it was perceived that there were
no such things, they were easily banished. The history and nature of the
great discovery are set down in the book here, and--"
"Did the lady write the book?"
"Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is Science and Health, with
Key to the Scriptures--for she explains the Scriptures; they were not
understood before. Not even by the twelve Disciples. She begins thus
--I will read it to you."
But she had forgotten to bring her glasses.
"Well, it is no matter," she said. "I remember the words--indeed, all
Christian Scientists know the book by heart; it is necessary in our
practice. We should otherwise make mistakes and do harm. She begins
thus: 'In the year 1866 I discovered the Science of Metaphysical
Healing, and named it Christian Science.' And She says quite beautifully,
I think--'Through Christian Science, religion and medicine are inspired
with a diviner nature and essence, fresh pinions are given to faith and
understanding, and thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God.'
Her very words."
"It is elegant. And it is a fine thought, too--marrying religion to
medicine, instead of medicine to the undertaker in the old way; for
religion and medicine properly belong together, they being the basis of
all spiritual and physical health. What kind of medicine do you give for
the ordinary diseases, such as--"
"We never give medicine in any circumstances whatever! We--"
"But, madam, it says--"
"I don't care what it says, and I don't wish to talk about it."
"I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention seemed in some
way inconsistent, and--"
"There are no inconsistencies in Christian Science. The thing is
impossible, for the Science is absolute. It cannot be otherwise, since
it proceeds directly from the All-in-all and the Everything-in-Which,
also Soul, Bones, Truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is
Mathematics purified from material dross and made spiritual."
"I can see that, but--"
"It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodictical Principle."
The word flattened itself against my mind in trying to get in, and
disordered me a little, and before I could inquire into its pertinency,
she was already throwing the needed light:
"This Apodictical Principle is the absolute Principle of Scientific
Mind-healing, the sovereign Omnipotence which delivers the children of
men from pain, disease, decay, and every ill that flesh is heir to."
"Surely not every ill, every decay?"
"Every one; there are no exceptions; there is no such thing as decay--it
is an unreality, it has no existence."
"But without your glasses your failing eyesight does not permit you to--"
"My eyesight cannot fail; nothing can fail; the Mind is master, and the
Mind permits no retrogression."
She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree, therefore there could
be no profit in continuing this part of the subject. I shifted to other
ground and inquired further concerning the Discoverer of the Science.
"Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or after long study and
calculation, like America?"
"The comparisons are not respectful, since they refer to trivialities
--but let it pass. I will answer in the Discoverer's own words: 'God had
been graciously fitting me, during many years, for the reception of a
final revelation of the absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing.'"
"Many years. How many?"
"Eighteen centuries!"
"All--God, God--good, good--God, Truth, Bones, Liver, one of a series,
alone and without equal--it is amazing!"
"You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth This American lady,
our revered and sacred Founder, is distinctly referred to, and her coming
prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; she could not have
been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning her
name."
"How strange, how wonderful!"
"I will quote her own words, from her Key to the Scriptures: 'The twelfth
chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in connection with
this nineteenth century.' There--do you note that? Think--note it well."
"But--what does it mean?"
"Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again: 'In the
opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam,
there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the
present age. Thus:
"'Revelation xii. I. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven--a
woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her
head a crown of twelve stars.'
"That is our Head, our Chief, our Discoverer of Christian Science
--nothing can be plainer, nothing surer. And note this:
"'Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she
had a place prepared of God.'
"That is Boston. I recognize it, madam. These are sublime things, and
impressive; I never understood these passages before; please go on with
the--with the--proofs."
"Very well. Listen:
"'And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a
cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the
sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he held in his hand a little
book.'
"A little book, merely a little book--could words be modester? Yet how
stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was?"
"Was it--"
"I hold it in my hand--Christian Science!"
"Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys, one of a series, alone and
without equal--it is beyond imagination for wonder!"
"Hear our Founder's eloquent words: 'Then will a voice from harmony cry,
"Go and take the little book: take it and eat it up, and it shall make
thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey." Mortal,
obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Read it from
beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be, indeed, sweet at its
first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find
its digestion bitter.' You now know the history of our dear and holy
Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its
discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now; but give
yourself no uneasiness--I will give you absent treatment from now till I
go to bed."
CHAPTER III
Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent
treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and
disappearing from view. The good work took a brisk start, now, and went
on swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this way
and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every minute
or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a
fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and
gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours,
and then stopped--the connections had all been made. All except
dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees,
neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their
sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good
as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.
I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in the
head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands
of a woman whom I did not know, and whose ability to successfully treat
mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified by the
fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the first,
along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of relief; and,
indeed, the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more and more
bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention from food
and drink.
The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic--in
fact, quite horsy--and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so, out of delicacy, I did not press it. He
looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favorable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the
head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would
know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful
of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and
axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in twenty-four
hours, or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on
the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then took his
leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and in any
quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and did not care for
food.
I took up the Christian Science book and read half of it, then took a
dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences
were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and
grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of
the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note
the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the
drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and
could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others
were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and
an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical
Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish
was reached at last, the evolutions were complete, and a fine success,
but I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer
materials. I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the
stomach-ache into the botts, but I think one could develop the blind
staggers out of the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers
produced in this way would be of a better quality and more lasting than
any produced by the artificial processes of the horse-doctor.
For of all the strange and frantic and incomprehensible and
uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely
this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence
and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often
compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to have
any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they
understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in all
cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things
as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world; nothing
actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their
testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science they do as
Mrs. Fuller did: they do not use their own language, but the book's; they
pour out the book's showy incoherences, and leave you to find out later
that they were not originating, but merely quoting; they seem to know the
volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible--another Bible,
perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental
desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the
membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it
you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech
delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the
particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a
vigorous instrument which is making a noise which it thinks is a tune,
but which, to persons not members of the band, is only the martial
tooting of a trombone, and merrily stirs the soul through the noise, but
does not convey a meaning.
The book's serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a
heavenly origin--they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than
human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and
so airily content with one's performance. Without ever presenting
anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence,
and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it
thunders out the startling words, "I have Proved" so and so. It takes
the Pope and all the great guns of his Church in battery assembled to
authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single
unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and study
and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all that: she
finds the whole Bible in an unclarified audition, and at small expense of
time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from lid to lid,
reorganizes and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and
establishes them with formulas which you cannot tell from "Let there be
light!" and "Here you have it!" It is the first time since the dawn-days
of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid
and complacent confidence and command.
[January, 1903. The first reading of any book whose terminology is
new and strange is nearly sure to leave the reader in a bewildered and
sarcastic state of mind. But now that, during the past two months, I
have, by diligence gained a fair acquaintanceship with Science and Health
technicalities, I no longer find the bulk of that work hard to
understand.--M. T.]
P.S. The wisdom harvested from the foregoing thoughts has already done
me a service and saved me a sorrow. Nearly a month ago there came to me
from one of the universities a tract by Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka on
the "Encephalic Anatomy of the Races." I judged that my opinion was
desired by the university, and I was greatly pleased with this attention
and wrote and said I would furnish it as soon as I could. That night I
put my plodding and disheartening Christian Science mining aside and took
hold of the matter. I wrote an eager chapter, and was expecting to
finish my opinion the next day, but was called away for a week, and my
mind was soon charged with other interests. It was not until to-day,
after the lapse of nearly a month, that I happened upon my Encephalic
chapter again. Meantime, the new wisdom had come to me, and I read it
with shame. I recognized that I had entered upon that work in far from
the right temper--far from the respectful and judicial spirit which was
its due of reverence. I had begun upon it with the following paragraph
for fuel:
"FISSURES OF THE PARIETAL AND OCCIPITAL LOBES (LATERAL SURFACE).--The
Postcentral Fissural Complex--In this hemicerebrum, the postcentral and
subcentral are combined to form a continuous fissure, attaining a length
of 8.5 cm. Dorsally, the fissure bifurcates, embracing the gyre indented
by the caudal limb of the paracentral. The caudal limb of the
postcentral is joined by a transparietal piece. In all, five additional
rami spring from the combined fissure. A vadum separates it from the
parietal; another from the central."
It humiliates me, now, to see how angry I got over that; and how
scornful. I said that the style was disgraceful; that it was labored and
tumultuous, and in places violent, that the treatment was involved and
erratic, and almost, as a rule, bewildering; that to lack of simplicity
was added a lack of vocabulary; that there was quite too much feeling
shown; that if I had a dog that would get so excited and incoherent over
a tranquil subject like Encephalic Anatomy I would not pay his tax; and
at that point I got excited myself and spoke bitterly of these mongrel
insanities, and said a person might as well try to understand Science and
Health.
[I know, now, where the trouble was, and am glad of the interruption that
saved me from sending my verdict to the university. It makes me cold to
think what those people might have thought of me.--M. T.]
CHAPTER IV
No one doubts--certainly not I--that the mind exercises a powerful
influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the
interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the
wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the
hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in their
work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that
force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that
where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the doctor
will make the bread pill effective.
Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look
like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the
royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman
have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could
he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure
that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance, but
the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a
saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if
the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy a
farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a
faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her
from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith
--it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments.
She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She
said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw
her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the
patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this
sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He
gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but
his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is
unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria
there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire
from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of
his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to
year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in
his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is
this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power
issuing from himself.
Within the last quarter of a century, in America, several sects of curers
have appeared under various names and have done notable things in the way
of healing ailments without the use of medicines. There are the Mind
Cure the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, the Mental Science Cure, and the
Christian-Science Cure; and apparently they all do their miracles with
the same old, powerful instrument--the patient's imagination. Differing
names, but no difference in the process. But they do not give that
instrument the credit; each sect claims that its way differs from the
ways of the others.
They all achieve some cures, there is no question about it; and the Faith
Cure and the Prayer Cure probably do no harm when they do no good, since
they do not forbid the patient to help out the cure with medicines if he
wants to; but the others bar medicines, and claim ability to cure every
conceivable human ailment through the application of their mental forces
alone. There would seem to be an element of danger here. It has the
look of claiming too much, I think. Public confidence would probably be
increased if less were claimed.
The Christian Scientist was not able to cure my stomach-ache and my cold;
but the horse-doctor did it. This convinces me that Christian Science
claims too much. In my opinion it ought to let diseases alone and
confine itself to surgery. There it would have everything its own way.
The horse-doctor charged me thirty kreutzers, and I paid him; in fact, I
doubled it and gave him a shilling. Mrs. Fuller brought in an itemized
bill for a crate of broken bones mended in two hundred and thirty-four
places--one dollar per fracture.
"Nothing exists but Mind?"
"Nothing," she answered. "All else is substanceless, all else is
imaginary."
I gave her an imaginary check, and now she is suing me for substantial
dollars. It looks inconsistent.
CHAPTER V
Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to
each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple
many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and
obscurities now.
Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there,
are nevertheless, no doubt, insane in one or two particulars. I think we
must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I
think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that, as
regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are
really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all
accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are
outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun
gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that six
times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leaves eight; that eight and
seven are fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are agreed
about; but, although they are so few, they are of inestimable value,
because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts
them him we know to be substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the
working essentials, sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them him we
know to be wholly insane, and qualified for the asylum.
Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to
go at large. But that is concession enough. We cannot go any further
than that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man
is insane--just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was.
We know exactly where to put our finger upon his insanity: it is where
his opinion differs from ours.
That is a simple rule, and easy to remember. When I, a thoughtful and
unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any
question every Mohammedan is insane; not in all things, but in religious
matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the
Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually
insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can
prove anything to a lunatic--for that is a part of his insanity and the
evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has
the same defect that afflicts his. All Democrats are insane, but not one
of them knows it; none but the Republicans and Mugwumps know it. All the
Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats and Mugwumps can perceive
it. The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are
insane. When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many
people are mad. To mention only a few:
The Atheist, The Theosophists, The Infidel, The Swedenborgians, The
Agnostic, The Shakers, The Baptist, The Millerites, The Methodist, The
Mormons, The Christian Scientist, The Laurence Oliphant Harrisites, The
Catholic, and the 115 Christian sects, the Presbyterian excepted, The
Grand Lama's people, The Monarchists, The Imperialists, The 72 Mohammedan
sects, The Democrats, The Republicans (but not the Mugwumps), The
Buddhist, The Blavatsky-Buddhist, The Mind-Curists, The Faith-Curists,
The Nationalist, The Mental Scientists, The Confucian, The Spiritualist,
The Allopaths, The 2000 East Indian sects, The Homeopaths, The
Electropaths, The Peculiar People, The--
But there's no end to the list; there are millions of them! And all
insane; each in his own way; insane as to his pet fad or opinion, but
otherwise sane and rational. This should move us to be charitable
towards one another's lunacies. I recognize that in his special belief
the Christian Scientist is insane, because he does not believe as I do;
but I hail him as my mate and fellow, because I am as insane as he insane
from his point of view, and his point of view is as authoritative as mine
and worth as much. That is to say, worth a brass farthing. Upon a great
religious or political question, the opinion of the dullest head in the
world is worth the same as the opinion of the brightest head in the
world--a brass farthing. How do we arrive at this? It is simple. The
affirmative opinion of a stupid man is neutralized by the negative
opinion of his stupid neighbor no decision is reached; the affirmative
opinion of the intellectual giant Gladstone is neutralized by the
negative opinion of the intellectual giant Newman--no decision is
reached. Opinions that prove nothing are, of course, without value any
but a dead person knows that much. This obliges us to admit the truth of
the unpalatable proposition just mentioned above--that, in disputed
matters political and religious, one man's opinion is worth no more than
his peer's, and hence it followers that no man's opinion possesses any
real value. It is a humbling thought, but there is no way to get around
it: all opinions upon these great subjects are brass-farthing opinions.
It is a mere plain, simple fact--as clear and as certain as that eight
and seven make fifteen. And by it we recognize that we are all insane,
as concerns those matters. If we were sane, we should all see a
political or religious doctrine alike; there would be no dispute: it
would be a case of eight and seven--just as it is in heaven, where all
are sane and none insane. There there is but one religion, one belief;
the harmony is perfect; there is never a discordant note.
Under protection of these preliminaries, I suppose I may now repeat
without offence that the Christian Scientist is insane. I mean him no
discourtesy, and I am not charging--nor even imagining--that he is
insaner than the rest of the human race. I think he is more
picturesquely insane than some of us. At the same time, I am quite sure
that in one important and splendid particular he is much saner than is
the vast bulk of the race.
Why is he insane? I told you before: it is because his opinions are not
ours. I know of no other reason, and I do not need any other; it is the
only way we have of discovering insanity when it is not violent. It is
merely the picturesqueness of his insanity that makes it more interesting
than my kind or yours. For instance, consider his "little book"; the
"little book" exposed in the sky eighteen centuries ago by the flaming
angel of the Apocalypse, and handed down in our day to Mrs. Mary Baker G.
Eddy, of New Hampshire, and translated by her, word for word, into
English (with help of a polisher), and now published and distributed in
hundreds of editions by her at a clear profit per volume, above cost, of
seven hundred per cent.!--a profit which distinctly belongs to the angel
of the Apocalypse, and let him collect it if he can; a "little book"
which the C.S. very frequently calls by just that name, and always
enclosed in quotation-marks to keep its high origin exultantly in mind; a
"little book" which "explains" and reconstructs and new-paints and
decorates the Bible, and puts a mansard roof on it and a lightning-rod
and all the other modern improvements; a "little book" which for the
present affects to travel in yoke with the Bible and be friendly to it,
and within half a century will hitch the Bible in the rear and
thenceforth travel tandem, itself in the lead, in the coming great march
of Christian Scientism through the Protestant dominions of the planet.
CHAPTER VI
"Hungry ones throng to hear the Bible read in connection with the
text-book of Christian Science, Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures, by Mary Baker G. Eddy. These are our only preachers. They
are the word of God." "Christian Science Journal", October, 1898.
Is that picturesque? A lady has told me that in a chapel of the Mosque
in Boston there is a picture or image of Mrs. Eddy, and that before it
burns a never-extinguished light. Is that picturesque? How long do you
think it will be before the Christian Scientist will be worshipping that
picture or image and praying to it? How long do you think it will be
before it is claimed that Mrs. Eddy is a Redeemer, a Christ, and Christ's
equal? Already her army of disciples speak of her reverently as "Our
Mother."
How long will it be before they place her on the steps of the Throne
beside the Virgin--and, later, a step higher? First, Mary the Virgin and
Mary the Matron; later, with a change of precedence, Mary the Matron and
Mary the Virgin. Let the artist get ready with his canvas and his
brushes; the new Renaissance is on its way, and there will be money in
altar-canvases--a thousand times as much as the Popes and their Church
ever spent on the Old Masters; for their riches were poverty as
compared with what is going to pour into the treasure-chest of the
Christian-Scientist Papacy by-and-by, let us not doubt it. We will
examine the financial outlook presently and see what it promises. A
favorite subject of the new Old Master will be the first verse of the
twelfth chapter of Revelation--a verse which Mrs. Eddy says (in her
Annex to the Scriptures) has "one distinctive feature which has special
reference to the present age"--and to her, as is rather pointedly
indicated:
"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the
sun, and the moon under her feet," etc.
The woman clothed with the sun will be a portrait of Mrs. Eddy.
Is it insanity to believe that Christian-Scientism is destined to make
the most formidable show that any new religion has made in the world
since the birth and spread of Mohammedanism, and that within a century
from now it may stand second to Rome only, in numbers and power in
Christendom?
If this is a wild dream it will not be easy to prove it so just yet,
I think. There seems argument that it may come true. The
Christian-Science "boom," proper, is not yet five years old; yet
already it has two hundred and fifty churches.
It has its start, you see, and it is a phenomenally good one. Moreover,
it is latterly spreading with a constantly accelerating swiftness. It
has a better chance to grow and prosper and achieve permanency than any
other existing "ism"; for it has more to offer than any other. The past
teaches us that in order to succeed, a movement like this must not be a
mere philosophy, it must be a religion; also, that it must not claim
entire originality, but content itself with passing for an improvement on
an existing religion, and show its hand later, when strong and
prosperous--like Mohammedanism.
Next, there must be money--and plenty of it.
Next, the power and authority and capital must be concentrated in the
grip of a small and irresponsible clique, with nobody outside privileged
to ask questions or find fault.
Next, as before remarked, it must bait its hook with some new and
attractive advantages over the baits offered by its competitors. A new
movement equipped with some of these endowments--like spiritualism, for
instance may count upon a considerable success; a new movement equipped
with the bulk of them--like Mohammedanism, for instance--may count upon
a widely extended conquest. Mormonism had all the requisites but one it
had nothing new and nothing valuable to bait with. Spiritualism lacked
the important detail of concentration of money and authority in the hands
of an irresponsible clique.
The above equipment is excellent, admirable, powerful, but not perfect.
There is yet another detail which is worth the whole of it put together
and more; a detail which has never been joined (in the beginning of a
religious movement) to a supremely good working equipment since the world
began, until now: a new personage to worship. Christianity had the
Saviour, but at first and for generations it lacked money and
concentrated power. In Mrs. Eddy, Christian Science possesses the new
personage for worship, and in addition--here in the very beginning--a
working equipment that has not a flaw in it. In the beginning,
Mohammedanism had no money; and it has never had anything to offer its
client but heaven--nothing here below that was valuable. In addition to
heaven hereafter, Christian Science has present health and a cheerful
spirit to offer; and in comparison with this bribe all other this-world
bribes are poor and cheap. You recognize that this estimate is
admissible, do you not?
To whom does Bellamy's "Nationalism" appeal? Necessarily to the few:
people who read and dream, and are compassionate, and troubled for the
poor and the hard-driven. To whom does Spiritualism appeal? Necessarily
to the few; its "boom" has lasted for half a century, and I believe it
claims short of four millions of adherents in America. Who are attracted
by Swedenborgianism and some of the other fine and delicate "isms"? The
few again: educated people, sensitively organized, with superior mental
endowments, who seek lofty planes of thought and find their contentment
there. And who are attracted by Christian Science? There is no limit;
its field is horizonless; its appeal is as universal as is the appeal of
Christianity itself. It appeals to the rich, the poor, the high, the
low, the cultured, the ignorant, the gifted, the stupid, the modest, the
vain, the wise, the silly, the soldier, the civilian, the hero, the
coward, the idler, the worker, the godly, the godless, the freeman, the
slave, the adult, the child; they who are ailing in body or mind, they
who have friends that are ailing in body or mind. To mass it in a
phrase, its clientage is the Human Race. Will it march? I think so.
Remember its principal great offer: to rid the Race of pain and disease.
Can it do so? In large measure, yes. How much of the pain and disease
in the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then
kept alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short
of that, I should think. Can Christian Science banish that four-fifths?
I think so. Can any other (organized) force do it? None that I know of.
Would this be a new world when that was accomplished? And a pleasanter
one--for us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick
ones? Would it seem as if there was not as much gloomy weather as there
used to be? I think so.
In the mean time, would the Scientist kill off a good many patients?
I think so. More than get killed off now by the legalized methods?
I will take up that question presently.
At present, I wish to ask you to examine some of the Scientist's
performances, as registered in his magazine, The Christian Science
Journal--October number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us this
true picture of "the average orthodox Christian"--and he could have added
that it is a true picture of the average (civilized) human being:
"He is a worried and fretted and fearful man; afraid of himself and his
propensities, afraid of colds and fevers, afraid of treading on serpents
or drinking deadly things."
Then he gives us this contrast:
"The average Christian Scientist has put all anxiety and fretting under
his feet. He does have a victory over fear and care that is not achieved
by the average orthodox Christian."
He has put all anxiety and fretting under his feet. What proportion of
your earnings or income would you be willing to pay for that frame of
mind, year in, year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put
upon it. Where can you purchase it, at any outlay of any sort, in any
Church or out of it, except the Scientist's?
Well, it is the anxiety and fretting about colds, and fevers, and
draughts, and getting our feet wet, and about forbidden food eaten in
terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the
indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and so, if the Science
can banish that anxiety from the world I think it can reduce the world's
disease and pain about four-fifths.
In this October number many of the redeemed testify and give thanks; and
not coldly, but with passionate gratitude. As a rule they seem drunk
with health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the
unspeakable glory and splendor of it, after a long, sober spell spent in
inventing imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff. The
first witness testifies that when "this most beautiful Truth first dawned
on him" he had "nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to"; that those he
did not have he thought he had--and this made the tale about complete.
What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit "for all the
doctors, druggists, and patent medicines of the country." Christian
Science came to his help, and "the old sick conditions passed away," and
along with them the "dismal forebodings" which he had been accustomed to
employ in conjuring up ailments. And so he was a healthy and cheerful
man, now, and astonished.
But I am not astonished, for from other sources I know what must have
been his method of applying Christian Science. If I am in the right, he
watchfully and diligently diverted his mind from unhealthy channels and
compelled it to travel in healthy ones. Nothing contrivable by human
invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing
imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against sub-sequent
applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, "I am
well! I am sound!--sound and well! well and sound! Perfectly sound,
perfectly well! I have no pain; there's no such thing as pain! I have
no disease; there's no such thing as disease! Nothing is real but Mind;
all is Mind, All-Good Good-Good, Life, Soul, Liver, Bones, one of a
series, ante and pass the buck!"
I do not mean that that was exactly the formula used, but that it
doubtless contains the spirit of it. The Scientist would attach value to
the exact formula, no doubt, and to the religious spirit in which it was
used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from
unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every
purpose with some people, though not with all. I think it most likely
that a very religious man would find the addition of the religious spirit
a powerful reinforcement in his case.
The second witness testifies that the Science banished "an old organic
trouble," which the doctor and the surgeon had been nursing with drugs
and the knife for seven years.
He calls it his "claim." A surface-miner would think it was not his
claim at all, but the property of the doctor and his pal the surgeon--for
he would be misled by that word, which is Christian-Science slang for
"ailment." The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him there is no
such thing, and he will not use the hateful word. All that happens to
him is that upon his attention an imaginary disturbance sometimes
obtrudes itself which claims to be an ailment but isn't.
This witness offers testimony for a clergyman seventy years old who had
preached forty years in a Christian church, and has now gone over to the
new sect. He was "almost blind and deaf." He was treated by the C. S.
method, and "when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually." Saw
spiritually? It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again.
Indefinite testimonies might properly be waste-basketed, since there is
evidently no lack of definite ones procurable; but this C. S. magazine
is poorly edited, and so mistakes of this kind must be expected.
The next witness is a soldier of the Civil War. When Christian Science
found him, he had in stock the following claims:
Indigestion,
Rheumatism,
Catarrh,
Chalky deposits in
Shoulder-joints,
Arm-joints,
Hand-joints,
Insomnia,
Atrophy of the muscles of
Arms.
Shoulders,
Stiffness of all those joints,
Excruciating pains most of the time.
These claims have a very substantial sound. They came of exposure in the
campaigns. The doctors did all they could, but it was little. Prayers
were tried, but "I never realized any physical relief from that source."
After thirty years of torture, he went to a Christian Scientist and took
an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later, he "began to
eat like a well man." Then "the claims vanished--some at once, others
more gradually"; finally, "they have almost entirely disappeared." And
--a thing which is of still greater value--he is now "contented and
happy." That is a detail which, as earlier remarked, is a Scientist
Church specialty. And, indeed, one may go further and assert with
little or no exaggeration that it is a Christian-Science monopoly. With
thirty-one years' effort, the Methodist Church had not succeeded in
furnishing it to this harassed soldier.
And so the tale goes on. Witness after witness bulletins his claims,
declares their prompt abolishment, and gives Mrs. Eddy's Discovery the
praise. Milk-leg is cured; nervous prostration is cured; consumption is
cured; and St. Vitus's dance is made a pastime. Even without a fiddle.
And now and then an interesting new addition to the Science slang appears
on the page. We have "demonstrations over chilblains" and such things.
It seems to be a curtailed way of saying "demonstrations of the power of
Christian-Science Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name
of Chilblains." The children, as well as the adults, share in the
blessings of the Science. "Through the study of the 'little book' they
are learning how to be healthful, peaceful, and wise." Sometimes they
are cured of their little claims by the professional healer, and
sometimes more advanced children say over the formula and cure
themselves.
A little Far-Western girl of nine, equipped with an adult vocabulary,
states her age and says, "I thought I would write a demonstration to
you." She had a claim, derived from getting flung over a pony's head and
landed on a rockpile. She saved herself from disaster by remembering to
say "God is All" while she was in the air. I couldn't have done it. I
shouldn't even have thought of it. I should have been too excited.
Nothing but Christian Science could have enabled that child to do that
calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came
down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it; but the
intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim resulting
was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At
school "it hurt pretty badly--that is, it seemed to." So "I was excused,
and went down to the basement and said, 'Now I am depending on mamma
instead of God, and I will depend on God instead of mamma.'" No doubt
this would have answered; but, to make sure, she added Mrs. Eddy to the
team and recited "the Scientific Statement of Being," which is one of the
principal incantations, I judge. Then "I felt my eye opening." Why,
dear, it would have opened an oyster. I think it is one of the
touchingest things in child-history, that pious little rat down cellar
pumping away at the Scientific Statement of Being.
There is a page about another good child--little Gordon. Little Gordon
"came into the world without the assistance of surgery or anaesthetics."
He was a "demonstration." A painless one; therefore, his coming evoked
"joy and thankfulness to God and the Discoverer of Christian Science."
It is a noticeable feature of this literature--the so frequent linking
together of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles.
When little Gordon was two years old, "he was playing horse on the bed,
where I had left my 'little book.' I noticed him stop in his play, take
the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about
for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there."
This pious act filled the mother "with such a train of thought as I had
never experienced before. I thought of the sweet mother of long ago who
kept things in her heart," etc. It is a bold comparison; however,
unconscious profanations are about as common in the mouths of the lay
member ship of the new Church as are frank and open ones in the mouths of
its consecrated chiefs.
Some days later, the family library--Christian-Science books--was lying
in a deep-seated window. This was another chance for the holy child to
show off. He left his play and went there and pushed all the books to
one side, except the Annex "It he took in both hands, slowly raised it to
his lips, then removed it carefully, and seated himself in the window."
It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that first time;
but now she was convinced that "neither imagination nor accident had
anything to do with it." Later, little Gordon let the author of his
being see him do it. After that he did it frequently; probably every
time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child than a chromo.
If this tale has any object, it is to intimate that the inspired book was
supernaturally able to convey a sense of its sacred and awful character
to this innocent little creature, without the intervention of outside
aids. The magazine is not edited with high-priced discretion. The
editor has a "claim," and he ought to get it treated.
Among other witnesses there is one who had a "jumping toothache," which
several times tempted her to "believe that there was sensation in matter,
but each time it was overcome by the power of Truth." She would not
allow the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and
drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its ulcerations,
and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't
once confess that it hurt. And to this day she thinks it didn't, and I
have not a doubt that she is nine-tenths right, and that her Christian
Science faith did her better service than she could have gotten out of
cocaine.
There is an account of a boy who got broken all up into small bits by an
accident, but said over the Scientific Statement of Being, or some of the
other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any
real pain and without the intrusion of a surgeon.
Also, there is an account of the restoration to perfect health, in a
single night, of a fatally injured horse, by the application of Christian
Science. I can stand a good deal, but I recognize that the ice is
getting thin, here. That horse had as many as fifty claims; how could
he demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good,
Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down but Nine, Set them up on the
Other Alley? Could he intone the Scientific Statement of Being? Now,
could he? Wouldn't it give him a relapse? Let us draw the line at
horses. Horses and furniture.
There is plenty of other testimonies in the magazine, but these quoted
samples will answer. They show the kind of trade the Science is driving.
Now we come back to the question, Does the Science kill a patient here
and there and now and then? We must concede it. Does it compensate for
this? I am persuaded that it can make a plausible showing in that
direction. For instance: when it lays its hand upon a soldier who has
suffered thirty years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and
mind, what is the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it
has restored to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year
for thirty years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its
interference that man in the three years which have since elapsed, would
have essentially died thirty times more. There are thousands of young
people in the land who are now ready to enter upon a life-long death
similar to that man's. Every time the Science captures one of these and
secures to him life-long immunity from imagination-manufactured disease,
it may plausibly claim that in his person it has saved three hundred
lives. Meantime, it will kill a man every now and then. But no matter,
it will still be ahead on the credit side.
[NOTE.--I have received several letters (two from educated and ostensibly
intelligent persons), which contained, in substance, this protest: "I
don't object to men and women chancing their lives with these people, but
it is a burning shame that the law should allow them to trust their
helpless little children in their deadly hands." Isn't it touching?
Isn't it deep? Isn't it modest? It is as if the person said: "I know
that to a parent his child is the core of his heart, the apple of his
eye, a possession so dear, so precious that he will trust its life in no
hands but those which he believes, with all his soul, to be the very best
and the very safest, but it is a burning shame that the law does not
require him to come to me to ask what kind of healer I will allow him to
call." The public is merely a multiplied "me."--M.T.]
CHAPTER VII
"We consciously declare that Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures, was foretold, as well as its author, Mary Baker Eddy, in
Revelation x. She is the 'mighty angel,' or God's highest thought to
this age (verse 1), giving us the spiritual interpretation of the Bible
in the 'little book open' (verse 2). Thus we prove that Christian
Science is the second coming of Christ-Truth-Spirit."--Lecture by Dr.
George Tomkins, D.D. C.S.
There you have it in plain speech. She is the mighty angel; she is the
divinely and officially sent bearer of God's highest thought. For the
present, she brings the Second Advent. We must expect that before she
has been in her grave fifty years she will be regarded by her following
as having been herself the Second Advent. She is already worshiped, and
we must expect this feeling to spread, territorially, and also to deepen
in intensity.
Particularly after her death; for then, as any one can foresee,
Eddy-Worship will be taught in the Sunday-schools and pulpits of the
cult. Already whatever she puts her trade-mark on, though it be only a
memorial-spoon, is holy and is eagerly and gratefully bought by the
disciple, and becomes a fetish in his house. I say bought, for the
Boston Christian-Science Trust gives nothing away; everything it has is
for sale. And the terms are cash; and not only cash, but cash in
advance. Its god is Mrs. Eddy first, then the Dollar. Not a spiritual
Dollar, but a real one. From end to end of the Christian Science
literature not a single (material) thing in the world is conceded to be
real, except the Dollar. But all through and through its advertisements
that reality is eagerly and persistently recognized.
The Dollar is hunted down in all sorts of ways; the Christian-Science
Mother-Church and Bargain-Counter in Boston peddles all kinds of
spiritual wares to the faithful, and always on the one condition--cash,
cash in advance. The Angel of the Apocalypse could not go there and get
a copy of his own pirated book on credit. Many, many precious Christian
Science things are to be had there for cash: Bible Lessons; Church
Manual; C. S. Hymnal; History of the building of the Mother-Church; lot
of Sermons; Communion Hymn, "Saw Ye My Saviour," by Mrs. Eddy, half a
dollar a copy, "words used by special permission of Mrs. Eddy." Also we
have Mrs. Eddy's and the Angel's little Blue-Annex in eight styles of
binding at eight kinds of war-prices; among these a sweet thing in
"levant, divinity circuit, leather lined to edge, round corners, gold
edge, silk sewed, each, prepaid, $6," and if you take a million you get
them a shilling cheaper--that is to say, "prepaid, $5.75." Also we have
Mrs. Eddy's Miscellaneous Writings, at 'andsome big prices, the
divinity-circuit style heading the exertions, shilling discount where
you take an edition Next comes Christ and Christmas, by the fertile Mrs.
Eddy--a poem--would God I could see it!--price $3, cash in advance.
Then follow five more books by Mrs. Eddy, at highwayman's rates, some of
them in "leatherette covers," some of them in "pebble cloth," with
divinity-circuit, compensation-balance, twin-screw, and the other modern
improvements; and at the same bargain-counter can be had The Christian
Science Journal.
Christian-Science literary discharges are a monopoly of the Mother-Church
Headquarters Factory in Boston; none genuine without the trade-mark of
the Trust. You must apply there and not elsewhere.
One hundred dollars for it. And I have a case among my statistics where
the student had a three weeks' course and paid three hundred for it.
The Trust does love the Dollar, when it isn't a spiritual one.
In order to force the sale of Mrs Eddy's Bible-Annex, no healer,
Metaphysical-College-bred or other, is allowed to practice the game
unless he possesses a copy of that book. That means a large and
constantly augmenting income for the Trust. No C.S. family would
consider itself loyal or pious or pain-proof without an Annex or two in
the house. That means an income for the Trust, in the near future, of
millions; not thousands-millions a year.
No member, young or old, of a branch Christian-Scientist church can
acquire and retain membership in the Mother-Church unless he pay
"capitation tax" (of "not less than a dollar," say the By-Laws) to the
Boston Trust every year. That means an income for the Trust, in the near
future, of--let us venture to say--millions more per year.
It is a reasonably safe guess that in America in 1920 there will be ten
million Christian Scientists, and three millions in Great Britain; that
these figures will be trebled in 1930; that in America in 1920 the
Christian Scientists will be a political force, in 1930 politically
formidable, and in 1940 the governing power in the Republic--to remain
that, permanently. And I think it a reasonable guess that the Trust
(which is already in our day pretty brusque in its ways) will then be the
most insolent and unscrupulous and tyrannical politico-religious master
that has dominated a people since the palmy days of the Inquisition. And
a stronger master than the strongest of bygone times, because this one
will have a financial strength not dreamed of by any predecessor; as
effective a concentration of irresponsible power as any predecessor has
had; in the railway, the telegraph, and the subsidized newspaper, better
facilities for watching and managing his empire than any predecessor has
had; and, after a generation or two, he will probably divide Christendom
with the Catholic Church.
The Roman Church has a perfect organization, and it has an effective
centralization of power--but not of its cash. Its multitude of Bishops
are rich, but their riches remain in large measure in their own hands.
They collect from two hundred millions of people, but they keep the bulk
of the result at home. The Boston Pope of by-and-by will draw his
dollar-a-head capitation-tax from three hundred millions of the human
race, and the Annex and the rest of his book-shop stock will fetch in as
much more; and his Metaphysical Colleges, the annual Pilgrimage to Mrs.
Eddy's tomb, from all over the world-admission, the Christian-Science
Dollar (payable in advance)--purchases of consecrated glass beads,
candles, memorial spoons, aureoled chrome-portraits and bogus autographs
of Mrs. Eddy; cash offerings at her shrine no crutches of cured cripples
received, and no imitations of miraculously restored broken legs and
necks allowed to be hung up except when made out of the Holy Metal and
proved by fire-assay; cash for miracles worked at the tomb: these
money-sources, with a thousand to be yet invented and ambushed upon the
devotee, will bring the annual increment well up above a billion. And
nobody but the Trust will have the handling of it. In that day, the
Trust will monopolize the manufacture and sale of the Old and New
Testaments as well as the Annex, and raise their price to Annex rates,
and compel the devotee to buy (for even to-day a healer has to have the
Annex and the Scriptures or he is not allowed to work the game), and that
will bring several hundred million dollars more. In those days, the
Trust will have an income approaching five million dollars a day, and no
expenses to be taken out of it; no taxes to pay, and no charities to
support. That last detail should not be lightly passed over by the
reader; it is well entitled to attention.
No charities to support. No, nor even to contribute to. One searches in
vain the Trust's advertisements and the utterances of its organs for any
suggestion that it spends a penny on orphans, widows, discharged
prisoners, hospitals, ragged schools, night missions, city missions,
libraries, old people's homes, or any other object that appeals to a
human being's purse through his heart.
I have hunted, hunted, and hunted, by correspondence and otherwise, and
have not yet got upon the track of a farthing that the Trust has spent
upon any worthy object. Nothing makes a Scientist so uncomfortable as to
ask him if he knows of a case where Christian Science has spent money on
a benevolence, either among its own adherents or elsewhere. He is
obliged to say "No" And then one discovers that the person questioned has
been asked the question many times before, and that it is getting to be a
sore subject with him. Why a sore subject? Because he has written his
chiefs and asked with high confidence for an answer that will confound
these questioners--and the chiefs did not reply. He has written again,
and then again--not with confidence, but humbly, now--and has begged for
defensive ammunition in the voice of supplication. A reply does at last
come to this effect: "We must have faith in Our Mother, and rest content
in the conviction that whatever She does with the money it is in
accordance with orders from Heaven, for She does no act of any kind
without first 'demonstrating over' it."
That settles it--as far as the disciple is concerned. His mind is
satisfied with that answer; he gets down his Annex and does an
incantation or two, and that mesmerizes his spirit and puts that to
sleep--brings it peace. Peace and comfort and joy, until some inquirer
punctures the old sore again.
Through friends in America I asked some questions, and in some cases got
definite and informing answers; in other cases the answers were not
definite and not valuable. To the question, "Does any of the money go to
charities?" the answer from an authoritative source was: "No, not in the
sense usually conveyed by this word." (The italics are mine.) That
answer is cautious. But definite, I think--utterly and unassailably
definite--although quite Christian-Scientifically foggy in its phrasing.
Christian-Science testimony is generally foggy, generally diffuse,
generally garrulous. The writer was aware that the first word in his
phrase answered the question which I was asking, but he could not help
adding nine dark words. Meaningless ones, unless explained by him. It
is quite likely, as intimated by him, that Christian Science has invented
a new class of objects to apply the word "charity" to, but without an
explanation we cannot know what they are. We quite easily and naturally
and confidently guess that they are in all cases objects which will
return five hundred per cent. on the Trust's investment in them, but
guessing is not knowledge; it is merely, in this case, a sort of
nine-tenths certainty deducible from what we think we know of the
Trust's trade principles and its sly and furtive and shifty ways.
Sly? Deep? Judicious? The Trust understands its business. The Trust
does not give itself away. It defeats all the attempts of us
impertinents to get at its trade secrets. To this day, after all our
diligence, we have not been able to get it to confess what it does with
the money. It does not even let its own disciples find out. All it says
is, that the matter has been "demonstrated over." Now and then a lay
Scientist says, with a grateful exultation, that Mrs. Eddy is enormously
rich, but he stops there; as to whether any of the money goes to other
charities or not, he is obliged to admit that he does not know. However,
the Trust is composed of human beings; and this justifies the conjecture
that if it had a charity on its list which it was proud of, we should
soon hear of it.
"Without money and without price." Those used to be the terms. Mrs.
Eddy's Annex cancels them. The motto of Christian Science is, "The
laborer is worthy of his hire." And now that it has been "demonstrated
over," we find its spiritual meaning to be, "Do anything and everything
your hand may find to do; and charge cash for it, and collect the money
in advance." The Scientist has on his tongue's end a cut-and-dried,
Boston-supplied set of rather lean arguments, whose function is to show
that it is a Heaven-commanded duty to do this, and that the croupiers of
the game have no choice but to obey.
The Trust seems to be a reincarnation. Exodus xxxii. 4.
I have no reverence for the Trust, but I am not lacking in reverence for
the sincerities of the lay membership of the new Church. There is every
evidence that the lay members are entirely sincere in their faith, and I
think sincerity is always entitled to honor and respect, let the
inspiration of the sincerity be what it may. Zeal and sincerity can
carry a new religion further than any other missionary except fire and
sword, and I believe that the new religion will conquer the half of
Christendom in a hundred years. I am not intending this as a compliment
to the human race; I am merely stating an opinion. And yet I think that
perhaps it is a compliment to the race. I keep in mind that saying of an
orthodox preacher--quoted further back. He conceded that this new
Christianity frees its possessor's life from frets, fears, vexations,
bitterness, and all sorts of imagination-propagated maladies and pains,
and fills his world with sunshine and his heart with gladness. If
Christian Science, with this stupendous equipment--and final salvation
added--cannot win half the Christian globe, I must be badly mistaken in
the make-up of the human race.
I think the Trust will be handed down like Me other Papacy, and will
always know how to handle its limitless cash. It will press the button;
the zeal, the energy, the sincerity, the enthusiasm of its countless
vassals will do the rest.
CHAPTER VIII
The power which a man's imagination has over his body to heal it or make
it sick is a force which none of us is born without. The first man had
it, the last one will possess it. If left to himself, a man is most
likely to use only the mischievous half of the force--the half which
invents imaginary ailments for him and cultivates them; and if he is one
of these--very wise people, he is quite likely to scoff at the beneficent
half of the force and deny its existence. And so, to heal or help that
man, two imaginations are required: his own and some outsider's. The
outsider, B, must imagine that his incantations are the healing-power
that is curing A, and A must imagine that this is so. I think it is not
so, at all; but no matter, the cure is effected, and that is the main
thing. The outsider's work is unquestionably valuable; so valuable that
it may fairly be likened to the essential work performed by the engineer
when he handles the throttle and turns on the steam; the actual power is
lodged exclusively in the engine, but if the engine were left alone it
would never start of itself. Whether the engineer be named Jim, or Bob,
or Tom, it is all one--his services are necessary, and he is entitled to
such wage as he can get you to pay. Whether he be named Christian
Scientist, or Mental Scientist, or Mind Curist, or King's-Evil Expert, or
Hypnotist, it is all one; he is merely the Engineer; he simply turns on
the same old steam and the engine does the whole work.
The Christian-Scientist engineer drives exactly the same trade as the
other engineers, yet he out-prospers the whole of them put together.
Is it because he has captured the takingest name? I think that that is
only a small part of it. I think that the secret of his high prosperity
lies elsewhere.
The Christian Scientist has organized the business. Now that was
certainly a gigantic idea. Electricity, in limitless volume, has existed
in the air and the rocks and the earth and everywhere since time began
--and was going to waste all the while. In our time we have organized
that scattered and wandering force and set it to work, and backed the
business with capital, and concentrated it in few and competent hands,
and the results are as we see.
The Christian Scientist has taken a force which has been lying idle in
every member of the human race since time began, and has organized it,
and backed the business with capital, and concentrated it at Boston
headquarters in the hands of a small and very competent Trust, and there
are results.
Therein lies the promise that this monopoly is going to extend its
commerce wide in the earth. I think that if the business were conducted
in the loose and disconnected fashion customary with such things, it
would achieve but little more than the modest prosperity usually secured
by unorganized great moral and commercial ventures; but I believe that so
long as this one remains compactly organized and closely concentrated in
a Trust, the spread of its dominion will continue.
CHAPTER IX
Four years ago I wrote the preceding chapters. I was assured by the wise
that Christian Science was a fleeting craze and would soon perish. This
prompt and all-competent stripe of prophet is always to be had in the
market at ground-floor rates. He does not stop to load, or consider, or
take aim, but lets fly just as he stands. Facts are nothing to him, he
has no use for such things; he works wholly by inspiration. And so, when
he is asked why he considers a new movement a passing fad and quickly
perishable, he finds himself unprepared with a reason and is more or less
embarrassed. For a moment. Only for a moment. Then he waylays the
first spectre of a reason that goes flitting through the desert places of
his mind, and is at once serene again and ready for conflict. Serene and
confident. Yet he should not be so, since he has had no chance to
examine his catch, and cannot know whether it is going to help his
contention or damage it.
The impromptu reason furnished by the early prophets of whom I have
spoken was this:
"There is nothing to Christian Science; there is nothing about it that
appeals to the intellect; its market will be restricted to the
unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who do not think."
They called that a reason why the cult would not flourish and endure. It
seems the equivalent of saying:
"There is no money in tinware; there is nothing about it that appeals to
the rich; its market will be restricted to the poor."
It is like bringing forward the best reason in the world why Christian
Science should flourish and live, and then blandly offering it as a
reason why it should sicken and die.
That reason was furnished me by the complacent and unfrightened prophets
four years ago, and it has been furnished me again to-day. If
conversions to new religions or to old ones were in any considerable
degree achieved through the intellect, the aforesaid reason would be
sound and sufficient, no doubt; the inquirer into Christian Science might
go away unconvinced and unconverted. But we all know that conversions
are seldom made in that way; that such a thing as a serious and
painstaking and fairly competent inquiry into the claims of a religion or
of a political dogma is a rare occurrence; and that the vast mass of men
and women are far from being capable of making such an examination. They
are not capable, for the reason that their minds, howsoever good they may
be, are not trained for such examinations. The mind not trained for that
work is no more competent to do it than are lawyers and farmers competent
to make successful clothes without learning the tailor's trade. There
are seventy-five million men and women among us who do not know how to
cut out and make a dress-suit, and they would not think of trying; yet
they all think they can competently think out a political or religious
scheme without any apprenticeship to the business, and many of them
believe they have actually worked that miracle. But, indeed, the truth
is, almost all the men and women of our nation or of any other get their
religion and their politics where they get their astronomy--entirely at
second hand. Being untrained, they are no more able to intelligently
examine a dogma or a policy than they are to calculate an eclipse.
Men are usually competent thinkers along the lines of their specialized
training only. Within these limits alone are their opinions and
judgments valuable; outside of these limits they grope and are lost
--usually without knowing it. In a church assemblage of five hundred
persons, there will be a man or two whose trained minds can seize upon
each detail of a great manufacturing scheme and recognize its value or
its lack of value promptly; and can pass the details in intelligent
review, section by section, and finally as a whole, and then deliver a
verdict upon the scheme which cannot be flippantly set aside nor easily
answered. And there will be one or two other men there who can do the
same thing with a great and complicated educational project; and one or
two others who can do the like with a large scheme for applying
electricity in a new and unheard-of way; and one or two others who can do
it with a showy scheme for revolutionizing the scientific world's
accepted notions regarding geology. And so on, and so on. But the
manufacturing experts will not be competent to examine the educational
scheme intelligently, and their opinion about it would not be valuable;
neither of these two groups will be able to understand and pass upon the
electrical scheme; none of these three batches of experts will be able to
understand and pass upon the geological revolution; and probably not one
man in the entire lot will be competent to examine, capably, the
intricacies of a political or religious scheme, new or old, and deliver a
judgment upon it which any one need regard as precious.
There you have the top crust. There will be four hundred and
seventy-five men and women present who can draw upon their training and
deliver incontrovertible judgments concerning cheese, and leather, and
cattle, and hardware, and soap, and tar, and candles, and patent
medicines, and dreams, and apparitions, and garden trucks, and cats, and
baby food, and warts, and hymns, and time-tables, and freight-rates, and
summer resorts, and whiskey, and law, and surgery, and dentistry, and
blacksmithing, and shoemaking, and dancing, and Huyler's candy, and
mathematics, and dog fights, and obstetrics, and music, and sausages, and
dry goods, and molasses, and railroad stocks, and horses, and literature,
and labor unions, and vegetables, and morals, and lamb's fries, and
etiquette, and agriculture. And not ten among the five hundred--let
their minds be ever so good and bright--will be competent, by grace of
the requisite specialized mental training, to take hold of a complex
abstraction of any kind and make head or tail of it.
The whole five hundred are thinkers, and they are all capable thinkers
--but only within the narrow limits of their specialized trainings. Four
hundred and ninety of them cannot competently examine either a religious
plan or a political one. A scattering few of them do examine both--that
is, they think they do. With results as precious as when I examine the
nebular theory and explain it to myself.
If the four hundred and ninety got their religion through their minds,
and by weighed and measured detail, Christian Science would not be a
scary apparition. But they don't; they get a little of it through their
minds, more of it through their feelings, and the overwhelming bulk of it
through their environment.
Environment is the chief thing to be considered when one is proposing to
predict the future of Christian Science. It is not the ability to reason
that makes the Presbyterian, or the Baptist, or the Methodist, or the
Catholic, or the Mohammedan, or the Buddhist, or the Mormon; it is
environment. If religions were got by reasoning, we should have the
extraordinary spectacle of an American family with a Presbyterian in it,
and a Baptist, a Methodist, a Catholic, a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, and a
Mormon. A Presbyterian family does not produce Catholic families or
other religious brands, it produces its own kind; and not by intellectual
processes, but by association. And so also with Mohammedanism, the cult
which in our day is spreading with the sweep of a world-conflagration
through the Orient, that native home of profound thought and of subtle
intellectual fence, that fertile womb whence has sprung every great
religion that exists. Including our own; for with all our brains we
cannot invent a religion and market it.
The language of my quoted prophets recurs to us now, and we wonder to
think how small a space in the world the mighty Mohammedan Church would
be occupying now, if a successful trade in its line of goods had been
conditioned upon an exhibit that would "appeal to the intellect" instead
of to "the unintelligent, the mentally inferior, the people who do not
think."
The Christian Science Church, like the Mohammedan Church, makes no
embarrassing appeal to the intellect, has no occasion to do it, and can
get along quite well without it.
Provided. Provided what? That it can secure that thing which is worth
two or three hundred thousand times more than an "appeal to the
intellect"--an environment. Can it get that? Will it be a menace to
regular Christianity if it gets that? Is it time for regular
Christianity to get alarmed? Or shall regular Christianity smile a smile
and turn over and take another nap? Won't it be wise and proper for
regular Christianity to do the old way, Me customary way, the historical
way--lock the stable-door after the horse is gone? Just as Protestantism
has smiled and nodded this long time (while the alert and diligent
Catholic was slipping in and capturing the public schools), and is now
beginning to hunt around for the key when it is too late?
Will Christian Science get a chance to show its wares? It has already
secured that chance. Will it flourish and spread and prosper if it shall
create for itself the one thing essential to those conditions--an
environment? It has already created an environment. There are families
of Christian Scientists in every community in America, and each family is
a factory; each family turns out a Christian Science product at the
customary intervals, and contributes it to the Cause in the only way in
which contributions of recruits to Churches are ever made on a large
scale--by the puissant forces of personal contact and association. Each
family is an agency for the Cause, and makes converts among the
neighbors, and starts some more factories.
Four years ago there were six Christian Scientists in a certain town that
I am acquainted with; a year ago there were two hundred and fifty there;
they have built a church, and its membership now numbers four hundred.
This has all been quietly done; done without frenzied revivals, without
uniforms, brass bands, street parades, corner oratory, or any of the
other customary persuasions to a godly life. Christian Science, like
Mohammedanism, is "restricted" to the "unintelligent, the people who do
not think." There lies the danger. It makes Christian Science
formidable. It is "restricted" to ninety-nine one-hundredths of the
human race, and must be reckoned with by regular Christianity. And will
be, as soon as it is too late.
BOOK II
"There were remarkable things about the stranger called the Man
--Mystery-things so very extraordinary that they monopolized attention
and made all of him seem extraordinary; but this was not so, the most of
his qualities being of the common, every-day size and like anybody
else's. It was curious. He was of the ordinary stature, and had the
ordinary aspects; yet in him were hidden such strange contradictions and
disproportions! He was majestically fearless and heroic; he had the
strength of thirty men and the daring of thirty thousand; handling
armies, organizing states, administering governments--these were pastimes
to him; he publicly and ostentatiously accepted the human race at its own
valuation--as demigods--and privately and successfully dealt with it at
quite another and juster valuation--as children and slaves; his ambitions
were stupendous, and his dreams had no commerce with the humble plain,
but moved with the cloud-rack among the snow-summits. These features of
him were, indeed, extraordinary, but the rest of him was ordinary and
usual. He was so mean-minded, in the matter of jealousy, that it was
thought he was descended from a god; he was vain in little ways, and had
a pride in trivialities; he doted on ballads about moonshine and bruised
hearts; in education he was deficient, he was indifferent to literature,
and knew nothing of art; he was dumb upon all subjects but one,
indifferent to all except that one--the Nebular Theory. Upon that one
his flow of words was full and free, he was a geyser. The official
astronomers disputed his facts and deeded his views, and said that he had
invented both, they not being findable in any of the books. But many of
the laity, who wanted their nebulosities fresh, admired his doctrine and
adopted it, and it attained to great prosperity in spite of the hostility
of the experts."--The Legend of the Man-Mystery, ch. i.
CHAPTER I
JANUARY, 1903. When we do not know a public man personally, we guess him
out by the facts of his career. When it is Washington, we all arrive at
about one and the same result. We agree that his words and his acts
clearly interpret his character to us, and that they never leave us in
doubt as to the motives whence the words and acts proceeded. It is the
same with Joan of Arc, it is the same with two or three or five or six
others among the immortals. But in the matter of motives and of a few
details of character we agree to disagree upon Napoleon, Cromwell, and
all the rest; and to this list we must add Mrs. Eddy. I think we can
peacefully agree as to two or three extraordinary features of her
make-up, but not upon the other features of it. We cannot peacefully
agree as to her motives, therefore her character must remain crooked to
some of us and straight to the others.
No matter, she is interesting enough without an amicable agreement. In
several ways she is the most interesting woman that ever lived, and the
most extraordinary. The same may be said of her career, and the same may
be said of its chief result. She started from nothing. Her enemies
charge that she surreptitiously took from Quimby a peculiar system of
healing which was mind-cure with a Biblical basis. She and her friends
deny that she took anything from him. This is a matter which we can
discuss by-and-by. Whether she took it or invented it, it was
--materially--a sawdust mine when she got it, and she has turned it into
a Klondike; its spiritual dock had next to no custom, if any at all: from
it she has launched a world-religion which has now six hundred and
sixty-three churches, and she charters a new one every four days. When
we do not know a person--and also when we do--we have to judge his size
by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the
achievements of others in his special line of business--there is no other
way. Measured by this standard, it is thirteen hundred years since the
world has produced any one who could reach up to Mrs. Eddy's waistbelt.
Figuratively speaking, Mrs. Eddy is already as tall as the Eiffel tower.
She is adding surprisingly to her stature every day. It is quite within
the probabilities that a century hence she will be the most imposing
figure that has cast its shadow across the globe since the inauguration
of our era. I grant that after saying these strong things, it is
necessary that I offer some details calculated to satisfactorily
demonstrate the proportions which I have claimed for her. I will do that
presently; but before exhibiting the matured sequoia gigantea, I believe
it will be best to exhibit the sprout from which it sprang. It may save
the reader from making miscalculations. The person who imagines that a
Big Tree sprout is bigger than other kinds of sprouts is quite mistaken.
It is the ordinary thing; it makes no show, it compels no notice, it
hasn't a detectible quality in it that entitles it to attention, or
suggests the future giant its sap is suckling. That is the kind of
sprout Mrs. Eddy was.
From her childhood days up to where she was running a half-century a
close race and gaining on it, she was most humanly commonplace.
She is the witness I am drawing this from. She has revealed it in her
autobiography not intentionally, of course--I am not claiming that. An
autobiography is the most treacherous thing there is. It lets out every
secret its author is trying to keep; it lets the truth shine unobstructed
through every harmless little deception he tries to play; it pitilessly
exposes him as a tin hero worshipping himself as Big Metal every time he
tries to do the modest-unconsciousness act before the reader. This is
not guessing; I am speaking from autobiographical personal experience; I
was never able to refrain from mentioning, with a studied casualness that
could deceive none but the most incautious reader, that an ancestor of
mine was sent ambassador to Spain by Charles I., nor that in a remote
branch of my family there exists a claimant to an earldom, nor that an
uncle of mine used to own a dog that was descended from the dog that was
in the Ark; and at the same time I was never able to persuade myself to
call a gibbet by its right name when accounting for other ancestors of
mine, but always spoke of it as the "platform"--puerilely intimating that
they were out lecturing when it happened.
It is Mrs. Eddy over again. As regards her minor half, she is as
commonplace as the rest of us. Vain of trivial things all the first half
of her life, and still vain of them at seventy and recording them with
naive satisfaction--even rescuing some early rhymes of hers of the sort
that we all scribble in the innocent days of our youth--rescuing them and
printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and commonest
of us do in our gray age. More--she still frankly admires them; and in
her introduction of them profanely confers upon them the holy name of
"poetry." Sample:
"And laud the land whose talents rock
The cradle of her power,
And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock
From erudition's bower."
"Minerva's silver sandals still
Are loosed and not effete."
You note it is not a shade above the thing which all human beings churn
out in their youth.
You would not think that in a little wee primer--for that is what the
Autobiography is--a person with a tumultuous career of seventy years
behind her could find room for two or three pages of padding of this
kind, but such is the case. She evidently puts narrative together with
difficulty and is not at home in it, and is glad to have something
ready-made to fill in with. Another sample:
"Here fame-honored Hickory rears his bold form,
And bears a brave breast to the lightning and storm,
While Palm, Bay, and Laurel in classical glee,
Chase Tulip, Magnolia, and fragrant Fringe-tree."
Vivid? You can fairly see those trees galloping around. That she could
still treasure up, and print, and manifestly admire those Poems,
indicates that the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that has
appeared in the earth in centuries has the same soft, girly-girly places
in her that the rest of us have.
When it comes to selecting her ancestors she is still human, natural,
vain, commonplace--as commonplace as I am myself when I am sorting
ancestors for my autobiography. She combs out some creditable Scots, and
labels them and sets them aside for use, not overlooking the one to whom
Sir William Wallace gave "a heavy sword encased in a brass scabbard," and
naively explaining which Sir William Wallace it was, lest we get the
wrong one by the hassock; this is the one "from whose patriotism and
bravery comes that heart-stirring air, 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled.'"
Hannah More was related to her ancestors. She explains who Hannah More
was.
Whenever a person informs us who Sir William Wallace was, or who wrote
"Hamlet," or where the Declaration of Independence was fought, it fills
us with a suspicion wellnigh amounting to conviction, that that person
would not suspect us of being so empty of knowledge if he wasn't
suffering from the same "claim" himself. Then we turn to page 20 of the
Autobiography and happen upon this passage, and that hasty suspicion
stands rebuked:
"I gained book-knowledge with far less labor than is usually requisite.
At ten years of age I was as familiar with Lindley Murray's Grammar as
with the Westminster Catechism; and the latter I had to repeat every
Sunday. My favorite studies were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral
Science. From my brother Albert I received lessons in the ancient
tongues, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin."
You catch your breath in astonishment, and feel again and still again the
pang of that rebuke. But then your eye falls upon the next sentence but
one, and the pain passes away and you set up the suspicion again with
evil satisfaction:
"After my discovery of Christian Science, most of the knowledge I had
gleaned from school-books vanished like a dream."
That disappearance accounts for much in her miscellaneous writings. As I
was saying, she handles her "ancestral shadows," as she calls them, just
as I do mine. It is remarkable. When she runs across "a relative of my
Grandfather Baker, General Henry Knox, of Revolutionary fame," she sets
him down; when she finds another good one, "the late Sir John Macneill,
in the line of my Grandfather Baker's family," she sets him down, and
remembers that he "was prominent in British politics, and at one time
held the position of ambassador to Persia"; when she discovers that her
grandparents "were likewise connected with Captain John Lovewell, whose
gallant leadership and death in the Indian troubles of 1722-25 caused
that prolonged contest to be known historically as Lovewell's War," she
sets the Captain down; when it turns out that a cousin of her grandmother
"was John Macneill, the New Hampshire general, who fought at Lundy's Lane
and won distinction in 1814 at the battle of Chippewa," she catalogues
the General. (And tells where Chippewa was.) And then she skips all her
platform people; never mentions one of them. It shows that she is just
as human as any of us.
Yet, after all, there is something very touching in her pride in these
worthy small-fry, and something large and fine in her modesty in not
caring to remember that their kinship to her can confer no distinction
upon her, whereas her mere mention of their names has conferred upon them
a faceless earthly immortality.
CHAPTER II
When she wrote this little biography her great life-work had already been
achieved, she was become renowned; to multitudes of reverent disciples
she was a sacred personage, a familiar of God, and His inspired channel
of communication with the human race. Also, to them these following
things were facts, and not doubted:
She had written a Bible in middle age, and had published it; she had
recast it, enlarged it, and published it again; she had not stopped
there, but had enlarged it further, polished its phrasing, improved its
form, and published it yet again. It was at last become a compact,
grammatical, dignified, and workman-like body of literature. This was
good training, persistent training; and in all arts it is training that
brings the art to perfection. We are now confronted with one of the most
teasing and baffling riddles of Mrs. Eddy's history--a riddle which may
be formulated thus:
How is it that a primitive literary gun which began as a hundred-yard
flint-lock smooth-bore muzzle-loader, and in the course of forty years
has acquired one notable improvement after another--percussion cap; fixed
cartridge; rifled barrel; efficiency at half a mile how is it that such a
gun, sufficiently good on an elephant hunt (Christian Science) from the
beginning, and growing better and better all the time during forty years,
has always collapsed back to its original flint-lock estate the moment
the huntress trained it on any other creature than an elephant?
Something more than a generation ago Mrs. Eddy went out with her
flint-lock on the rabbit range; and this was a part of the result:
"After his decease, and a severe casualty deemed fatal by skilful
physicians, we discovered that the Principle of all healing and the law
that governs it is God, a divine Principle, and a spiritual not material
law, and regained health."--Preface to Science and Health, first
revision, 1883.
N.B. Not from the book itself; from the Preface.
You will notice the awkwardness of that English. If you should carry
that paragraph up to the Supreme Court of the United States in order to
find out for good and all whether the fatal casualty happened to the dead
man--as the paragraph almost asserts--or to some person or persons not
even hinted at in the paragraph, the Supreme Court would be obliged to
say that the evidence established nothing with certainty except that
there had been a casualty--victim not known.
The context thinks it explains who the victim was, but it does nothing of
the kind. It furnishes some guessing-material of a sort which enables
you to infer that it was "we" that suffered the mentioned injury, but if
you should carry the language to a court you would not be able to prove
that it necessarily meant that. "We" are Mrs. Eddy; a funny little
affectation. She replaced it later with the more dignified third person.
The quoted paragraph is from Mrs. Eddy's preface to the first revision of
Science and Health (1883). Sixty-four pages further along--in the body
of the book (the elephant-range), she went out with that same flint-lock
and got this following result. Its English is very nearly as straight
and clean and competent as is the English of the latest revision of
Science and Health after the gun has been improved from smooth-bore
musket up to globe-sighted, long distance rifle:
"Man controlled by his Maker has no physical suffering. His body is
harmonious, his days are multiplying instead of diminishing, he is
journeying towards Life instead of death, and bringing out the new man
and crucifying the old affections, cutting them off in every material
direction until he learns the utter supremacy of Spirit and yields
obedience thereto."
In the latest revision of Science and Health (1902), the perfected gun
furnishes the following. The English is clean, compact, dignified,
almost perfect. But it is observable that it is not prominently better
than it is in the above paragraph, which was a product of the primitive
flint-lock:
"How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and
hastening to death, and at the same time we are communing with
immortality? If the departed are in rapport with mortality, or matter,
they are not spiritual, but must still be mortal, sinful, suffering, and
dying. Then wherefore look to them--even were communication possible
--for proofs of immortality and accept them as oracles?"--Edition of
1902, page 78.
With the above paragraphs compare these that follow. It is Mrs. Eddy
writing--after a good long twenty years of pen-practice. Compare also
with the alleged Poems already quoted. The prominent characteristic of
the Poems is affectation, artificiality; their makeup is a complacent and
pretentious outpour of false figures and fine writing, in the sophomoric
style. The same qualities and the same style will be found, unchanged,
unbettered, in these following paragraphs--after a lapse of more than
fifty years, and after--as aforesaid--long literary training. The
italics are mine:
1. "What plague spot or bacilli were [sic] gnawing [sic] at the heart of
this metropolis . . . and bringing it [the heart] on bended knee?
Why, it was an institute that had entered its vitals--that, among other
things, taught games," et cetera.--C.S. Journal, p. 670, article
entitled "A Narrative--by Mary Baker G. Eddy."
2. "Parks sprang up [sic] . . . electric-cars run [sic] merrily
through several streets, concrete sidewalks and macadamized roads dotted
[sic] the place," et cetera.--Ibid.
3. "Shorn [sic] of its suburbs it had indeed little left to admire, save
to [sic] such as fancy a skeleton above ground breathing [sic] slowly
through a barren [sic] breast."--Ibid.
This is not English--I mean, grown-up English. But it is
fifteen-year-old English, and has not grown a month since the same
mind produced the Poems. The standard of the Poems and of the
plague-spot-and-bacilli effort is exactly the same. It is most strange
that the same intellect that worded the simple and self-contained and
clean-cut paragraph beginning with "How unreasonable is the belief,"
should in the very same lustrum discharge upon the world such a verbal
chaos as the utterance concerning that plague-spot or bacilli which were
gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on bended
knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing slowly
through a barren breast.
The immense contrast between the legitimate English of Science and Health
and the bastard English of Mrs. Eddy's miscellaneous work, and between
the maturity of the one diction and the juvenility of the other,
suggests--compels--the question, Are there two guns? It would seem so.
Is there a poor, foolish, old, scattering flint-lock for rabbit, and a
long-range, centre-driving, up-to-date Mauser-magazine for elephant? It
looks like it. For it is observable that in Science and Health (the
elephant-ground) the practice was good at the start and has remained so,
and that the practice in the miscellaneous, outside, small-game field was
very bad at the start and was never less bad at any later time.
I wish to say that of Mrs. Eddy I am not requiring perfect English, but
only good English. No one can write perfect English and keep it up
through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done. It was
approached in the "well of English undefiled"; it has been approached in
Mrs. Eddy's Annex to that Book; it has been approached in several English
grammars; I have even approached it myself; but none of us has made port.
Now, the English of Science and Health is good. In passages to be found
in Mrs. Eddy's Autobiography (on pages 53, 57, 101, and 113), and on page
6 of her squalid preface to Science and Health, first revision, she seems
to me to claim the whole and sole authorship of the book. That she
wrote the Autobiography, and that preface, and the Poems, and the
Plague-spot-Bacilli, we are not permitted to doubt. Indeed, we know she
wrote them. But the very certainty that she wrote these things compels a
doubt that she wrote Science and Health. She is guilty of little
awkwardnesses of expression in the Autobiography which a practiced pen
would hardly allow to go uncorrected in even a hasty private letter, and
could not dream of passing by uncorrected in passages intended for print.
But she passes them placidly by; as placidly as if she did not suspect
that they were offenses against third-class English. I think that that
placidity was born of that very unawareness, so to speak. I will cite a
few instances from the Autobiography. The italics are mine:
"I remember reading in my childhood certain manuscripts containing
Scriptural Sonnets, besides other verses and enigmas," etc. Page 7.
[On page 27.] "Many pale cripples went into the Church leaning on
crutches who came out carrying them on their shoulders."
It is awkward, because at the first glance it seems to say that the
cripples went in leaning on crutches which went out carrying the cripples
on their shoulders. It would have cost her no trouble to put her "who"
after her "cripples." I blame her a little; I think her proof-reader
should have been shot. We may let her capital C pass, but it is another
awkwardness, for she is talking about a building, not about a religious
society.
"Marriage and Parentage" [Chapter-heading. Page 30]. You imagine that
she is going to begin a talk about her marriage and finish with some
account of her father and mother. And so you will be deceived.
"Marriage" was right, but "Parentage" was not the best word for the rest
of the record. It refers to the birth of her own child. After a certain
period of time "my babe was born." Marriage and Motherhood--Marriage and
Maternity--Marriage and Product--Marriage and Dividend--either of these
would have fitted the facts and made the matter clear.
"Without my knowledge he was appointed a guardian." Page 32.
She is speaking of her child. She means that a guardian for her child
was appointed, but that isn't what she says.
"If spiritual conclusions are separated from their premises, the nexus is
lost, and the argument with its rightful conclusions, becomes
correspondingly obscure." Page 34.
We shall never know why she put the word "correspondingly" in there. Any
fine, large word would have answered just as well: psychosuperintangibly
--electroincandescently--oligarcheologically--sanchrosynchro-
stereoptically--any of these would have answered, any of these would have
filled the void.
"His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon silenced portraiture." Page 34.
Yet she says she forgot everything she knew, when she discovered
Christian Science. I realize that noumenon is a daisy; and I will not
deny that I shall use it whenever I am in a company which I think I can
embarrass with it; but, at the same time, I think it is out of place
among friends in an autobiography. There, I think a person ought not to
have anything up his sleeve. It undermines confidence. But my
dissatisfaction with the quoted passage is not on account of noumenon; it
is on account of the misuse of the word "silenced." You cannot silence
portraiture with a noumenon; if portraiture should make a noise, a way
could be found to silence it, but even then it could not be done with a
noumenon. Not even with a brick, some authorities think.
"It may be that the mortal life-battle still wages," etc. Page 35.
That is clumsy. Battles do not wage, battles are waged. Mrs. Eddy has
one very curious and interesting peculiarity: whenever she notices that
she is chortling along without saying anything, she pulls up with a
sudden "God is over us all," or some other sounding irrelevancy, and for
the moment it seems to light up the whole district; then, before you can
recover from the shock, she goes flitting pleasantly and meaninglessly
along again, and you hurry hopefully after her, thinking you are going to
get something this time; but as soon as she has led you far enough away
from her turkey lot she takes to a tree. Whenever she discovers that she
is getting pretty disconnected, she couples-up with an ostentatious "But"
which has nothing to do with anything that went before or is to come
after, then she hitches some empties to the train-unrelated verses from
the Bible, usually--and steams out of sight and leaves you wondering how
she did that clever thing. For striking instances, see bottom paragraph
on page 34 and the paragraph on page 35 of her Autobiography. She has a
purpose--a deep and dark and artful purpose--in what she is saying in the
first paragraph, and you guess what it is, but that is due to your own
talent, not hers; she has made it as obscure as language could do it.
The other paragraph has no meaning and no discoverable intention. It is
merely one of her God-over-alls. I cannot spare room for it in this
place.
"I beheld with ineffable awe our great Master's marvelous skill in
demanding neither obedience to hygienic laws nor," etc. Page 41.
The word is loosely chosen-skill. She probably meant judgment,
intuition, penetration, or wisdom.
"Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to express in feeble
diction Truth's ultimate." Page 42.
One understands what she means, but she should have been able to say what
she meant--at any time before she discovered Christian Science and forgot
everything she knew--and after it, too. If she had put "feeble" in front
of "efforts" and then left out "in" and "diction," she would have scored.
" . . . its written expression increases in perfection under the
guidance of the great Master." Page 43.
It is an error. Not even in those advantageous circumstances can
increase be added to perfection.
"Evil is not mastered by evil; it can only be overcome with Good. This
brings out the nothingness of evil, and the eternal Somethingness
vindicates the Divine Principle and improves the race of Adam." Page 76.
This is too extraneous for me. That is the trouble with Mrs. Eddy when
she sets out to explain an over-large exhibit: the minute you think the
light is bursting upon you the candle goes out and your mind begins to
wander.
"No one else can drain the cup which I have drunk to the dregs, as the
discoverer and teacher of Christian Science" Page 47.
That is saying we cannot empty an empty cup. We knew it before; and we
know she meant to tell us that that particular cup is going to remain
empty. That is, we think that that was the idea, but we cannot be sure.
She has a perfectly astonishing talent for putting words together in such
a way as to make successful inquiry into their intention impossible.
She generally makes us uneasy when she begins to tune up on her
fine-writing timbrel. It carries me back to her Plague-Spot and Poetry
days, and I just dread those:
"Into mortal mind's material obliquity I gazed and stood abashed.
Blanched was the cheek of pride. My heart bent low before the
omnipotence of Spirit, and a tint of humility soft as the heart of a
moonbeam mantled the earth. Bethlehem and Bethany, Gethsemane and
Calvary, spoke to my chastened sense as by the tearful lips of a babe."
Page 48.
The heart of a moonbeam is a pretty enough Friendship's-Album expression
--let it pass, though I do think the figure a little strained; but
humility has no tint, humility has no complexion, and if it had it could
not mantle the earth. A moonbeam might--I do not know--but she did not
say it was the moonbeam. But let it go, I cannot decide it, she mixes me
up so. A babe hasn't "tearful lips," it's its eyes. You find none of
Mrs. Eddy's kind of English in Science and Health--not a line of it.
CHAPTER III
Setting aside title-page, index, etc., the little Autobiography begins on
page 7 and ends on page 130. My quotations are from the first forty
pages. They seem to me to prove the presence of the 'prentice hand. The
style of the forty pages is loose and feeble and 'prentice-like. The
movement of the narrative is not orderly and sequential, but rambles
around, and skips forward and back and here and there and yonder,
'prentice-fashion. Many a journeyman has broken up his narrative and
skipped about and rambled around, but he did it for a purpose, for an
advantage; there was art in it, and points to be scored by it; the
observant reader perceived the game, and enjoyed it and respected it, if
it was well played. But Mrs. Eddy's performance was without intention,
and destitute of art. She could score no points by it on those terms,
and almost any reader can see that her work was the uncalculated
puttering of a novice.
In the above paragraph I have described the first third of the booklet.
That third being completed, Mrs. Eddy leaves the rabbit-range, crosses
the frontier, and steps out upon her far-spreading big-game territory
--Christian Science and there is an instant change! The style smartly
improves; and the clumsy little technical offenses disappear. In these
two-thirds of the booklet I find only one such offence, and it has the
look of being a printer's error.
I leave the riddle with the reader. Perhaps he can explain how it is
that a person-trained or untrained--who on the one day can write nothing
better than Plague-Spot-Bacilli and feeble and stumbling and wandering
personal history littered with false figures and obscurities and
technical blunders, can on the next day sit down and write fluently,
smoothly, compactly, capably, and confidently on a great big thundering
subject, and do it as easily and comfortably as a whale paddles around
the globe.
As for me, I have scribbled so much in fifty years that I have become
saturated with convictions of one sort and another concerning a
scribbler's limitations; and these are so strong that when I am familiar
with a literary person's work I feel perfectly sure that I know enough
about his limitations to know what he can not do. If Mr. Howells should
pretend to me that he wrote the Plague-Spot Bacilli rhapsody, I should
receive the statement courteously; but I should know it for a--well, for
a perversion. If the late Josh Billings should rise up and tell me that
he wrote Herbert Spencer's philosophies; I should answer and say that the
spelling casts a doubt upon his claim. If the late Jonathan Edwards
should rise up and tell me he wrote Mr. Dooley's books, I should answer
and say that the marked difference between his style and Dooley's is
argument against the soundness of his statement. You see how much I
think of circumstantial evidence. In literary matters--in my belief--it
is often better than any person's word, better than any shady character's
oath. It is difficult for me to believe that the same hand that wrote
the Plague-Spot-Bacilli and the first third of the little Eddy biography
wrote also Science and Health. Indeed, it is more than difficult, it is
impossible.
Largely speaking, I have read acres of what purported to be Mrs. Eddy's
writings, in the past two months. I cannot know, but I am convinced,
that the circumstantial evidence shows that her actual share in the work
of composing and phrasing these things was so slight as to be
inconsequential. Where she puts her literary foot down, her trail across
her paid polisher's page is as plain as the elephant's in a Sunday-school
procession. Her verbal output, when left undoctored by her clerks, is
quite unmistakable It always exhibits the strongly distinctive features
observable in the virgin passages from her pen already quoted by me:
Desert vacancy, as regards thought.
Self-complacency.
Puerility.
Sentimentality.
Affectations of scholarly learning.
Lust after eloquent and flowery expression.
Repetition of pet poetic picturesquenesses.
Confused and wandering statement.
Metaphor gone insane.
Meaningless words, used because they are pretty, or showy, or unusual.
Sorrowful attempts at the epigrammatic.
Destitution of originality.
The fat volume called Miscellaneous Writings of Mrs. Eddy contains
several hundred pages. Of the five hundred and fifty-four pages of prose
in it I find ten lines, on page 319, to be Mrs. Eddy's; also about a page
of the preface or "Prospectus"; also about fifteen pages scattered along
through the book. If she wrote any of the rest of the prose, it was
rewritten after her by another hand. Here I will insert two-thirds of
her page of the prospectus. It is evident that whenever, under the
inspiration of the Deity, she turns out a book, she is always allowed to
do some of the preface. I wonder why that is? It always mars the work.
I think it is done in humorous malice I think the clerks like to see her
give herself away. They know she will, her stock of usable materials
being limited and her procedure in employing them always the same,
substantially. They know that when the initiated come upon her first
erudite allusion, or upon any one of her other stage-properties, they can
shut their eyes and tell what will follow. She usually throws off an
easy remark all sodden with Greek or Hebrew or Latin learning; she
usually has a person watching for a star--she can seldom get away from
that poetic idea--sometimes it is a Chaldee, sometimes a Walking
Delegate, sometimes an entire stranger, but be he what he may, he is
generally there when the train is ready to move, and has his pass in his
hat-band; she generally has a Being with a Dome on him, or some other
cover that is unusual and out of the fashion; she likes to fire off a
Scripture-verse where it will make the handsomest noise and come nearest
to breaking the connection; she often throws out a Forefelt, or a
Foresplendor, or a Foreslander where it will have a fine nautical
foreto'gallant sound and make the sentence sing; after which she is
nearly sure to throw discretion away and take to her deadly passion,
Intoxicated Metaphor. At such a time the Mrs. Eddy that does not
hesitate is lost:
"The ancient Greek looked longingly for the Olympiad. The Chaldee
watched the appearing of a star; to him no higher destiny dawned on the
dome of being than that foreshadowed by signs in the heavens. The meek
Nazarene, the scoffed of all scoffers, said, 'Ye can discern the face of
the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?'--for He forefelt
and foresaw the ordeal of a perfect Christianity, hated by sinners.
"To kindle all minds with a gleam of gratitude, the new idea that comes
welling up from infinite Truth needs to be understood. The seer of this
age should be a sage.
"Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity. The
mounting sense gathers fresh forms and strange fire from the ashes of
dissolving self, and drops the world. Meekness heightens immortal
attributes, only by removing the dust that dims them. Goodness reveals
another scene and another self seemingly rolled up in shades, but brought
to light by the evolutions of advancing thought, whereby we discern the
power of Truth and Love to heal the sick.
"Pride is ignorance; those assume most who have the least wisdom or
experience; and they steal from their neighbor, because they have so
little of their own."--Miscellaneous Writings, page 1, and six lines at
top of page 2.
It is not believable that the hand that wrote those clumsy and affected
sentences wrote the smooth English of Science and Health.
CHAPTER IV
It is often said in print that Mrs. Eddy claims that God was the Author
of Science and Health. Mr. Peabody states in his pamphlet that "she says
not she but God was the Author." I cannot find that in her autobiography
she makes this transference of the authorship, but I think that in it she
definitely claims that she did her work under His inspiration--definitely
for her; for as a rule she is not a very definite person, even when she
seems to be trying her best to be clear and positive. Speaking of the
early days when her Science was beginning to unfold itself and gather
form in her mind, she says (Autobiography, page 43):
"The divine hand led me into a new world of light and Life, a fresh
universe--old to God, but new to His 'little one.'"
She being His little one, as I understand it.
The divine hand led her. It seems to mean "God inspired me"; but when a
person uses metaphors instead of statistics--and that is Mrs. Eddy's
common fashion--one cannot always feel sure about the intention.
[Page 56.] "Even the Scripture gave no direct interpretation of the
Scientific basis for demonstrating the spiritual Principle of healing,
until our Heavenly Father saw fit, through the Key to the Scriptures, in
Science and Health, to unlock this 'mystery of godliness.'"
Another baffling metaphor. If she had used plain forecastle English, and
said "God wrote the Key and I put it in my book"; or if she had said "God
furnished me the solution of the mystery and I put it on paper"; or if
she had said "God did it all," then we should understand; but her phrase
is open to any and all of those translations, and is a Key which unlocks
nothing--for us. However, it seems to at least mean "God inspired me,"
if nothing more.
There was personal and intimate communion, at any rate we get that much
out of the riddles. The connection extended to business, after the
establishment of the teaching and healing industry.
[Page 71.] "When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction," etc.
Further down: "God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom
of this decision."
She was not able to think of a "financial equivalent"--meaning a
pecuniary equivalent--for her "instruction in Christian Science
Mind-healing." In this emergency she was "led" to charge three hundred
dollars for a term of "twelve half-days." She does not say who led her,
she only says that the amount greatly troubled her. I think it means
that the price was suggested from above, "led" being a theological term
identical with our commercial phrase "personally conducted." She "shrank
from asking it, but was finally led, by a strange providence, to accept
this fee." "Providence" is another theological term. Two leds and a
providence, taken together, make a pretty strong argument for
inspiration. I think that these statistics make it clear that the price
was arranged above. This view is constructively supported by the fact,
already quoted, that God afterwards approved, "in multitudinous ways,"
her wisdom in accepting the mentioned fee. "Multitudinous ways"
--multitudinous encoring--suggests enthusiasm. Business enthusiasm. And
it suggests nearness. God's nearness to his "little one." Nearness, and
a watchful personal interest. A warm, palpitating, Standard-Oil
interest, so to speak. All this indicates inspiration. We may assume,
then, two inspirations: one for the book, the other for the business.
The evidence for inspiration is further augmented by the testimony of
Rev. George Tomkins, D.D., already quoted, that Mrs. Eddy and her book
were foretold in Revelation, and that Mrs. Eddy "is God's brightest
thought to this age, giving us the spiritual interpretation of the Bible
in the 'little book'" of the Angel.
I am aware that it is not Mr. Tomkins that is speaking, but Mrs. Eddy.
The commissioned lecturers of the Christian Science Church have to be
members of the Board of Lectureship. (By-laws Sec. 2, p. 70.) The
Board of Lectureship is selected by the Board of Directors of the Church.
(By-laws, Sec. 3, p. 70.) The Board of Directors of the Church is the
property of Mrs. Eddy. (By-laws, p. 22.) Mr. Tomkins did not make that
statement without authorization from headquarters. He necessarily got it
from the Board of Directors, the Board of Directors from Mrs. Eddy, Mrs.
Eddy from the Deity. Mr. Tomkins would have been turned down by that
procession if his remarks had been unsatisfactory to it.
It may be that there is evidence somewhere--as has been claimed--that
Mrs. Eddy has charged upon the Deity the verbal authorship of Science and
Health. But if she ever made the charge, she has withdrawn it (as it
seems to me), and in the most formal and unqualified; of all ways. See
Autobiography, page 57:
"When the demand for this book increased . . . the copyright was
infringed. I entered a suit at Law, and my copyright was protected."
Thus it is plain that she did not plead that the Deity was the (verbal)
Author; for if she had done that, she would have lost her case--and with
rude promptness. It was in the old days before the Berne Convention and
before the passage of our amended law of 1891, and the court would have
quoted the following stern clause from the existing statute and frowned
her out of the place:
"No Foreigner can acquire copyright in the United States."
To sum up. The evidence before me indicates three things:
1. That Mrs. Eddy claims the verbal author ship for herself.
2. That she denies it to the Deity.
3. That--in her belief--she wrote the book under the inspiration of the
Deity, but furnished the language herself.
In one place in the Autobiography she claims both the language and the
ideas; but when this witness is testifying, one must draw the line
somewhere, or she will prove both sides of her case-nine sides, if
desired.
It is too true. Much too true. Many, many times too true. She is a
most trying witness--the most trying witness that ever kissed the Book, I
am sure. There is no keeping up with her erratic testimony. As soon as
you have got her share of the authorship nailed where you half hope and
half believe it will stay and cannot be joggled loose any more, she
joggles it loose again--or seems to; you cannot be sure, for her habit of
dealing in meaningless metaphors instead of in plain, straightforward
statistics, makes it nearly always impossible to tell just what it is she
is trying to say. She was definite when she claimed both the language
and the ideas of the book. That seemed to settle the matter. It seemed
to distribute the percentages of credit with precision between the
collaborators: ninety-two per cent. to Mrs. Eddy, who did all the work,
and eight per cent. to the Deity, who furnished the inspiration not
enough of it to damage the copyright in a country closed against
Foreigners, and yet plenty to advertise the book and market it at famine
rates. Then Mrs. Eddy does not keep still, but fetches around and comes
forward and testifies again. It is most injudicious. For she resorts to
metaphor this time, and it makes trouble, for she seems to reverse the
percentages and claim only the eight per cent. for her self. I quote
from Mr. Peabody's book (Eddyism, or Christian Science. Boston: 15 Court
Square, price twenty-five cents):
"Speaking of this book, Mrs. Eddy, in January last (1901) said: 'I should
blush to write of Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures, as I
have, were it of human origin, and I, apart from God, its author; but as
I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of Heaven in divine
metaphysics, I cannot be supermodest of the Christian Science
text-book."'
Mr. Peabody's comment:
"Nothing could be plainer than that. Here is a distinct avowal that the
book entitled Science and Health was the work of Almighty God."
It does seem to amount to that. She was only a "scribe." Confound the
word, it is just a confusion, it has no determinable meaning there, it
leaves us in the air. A scribe is merely a person who writes. He may be
a copyist, he may be an amanuensis, he may be a writer of originals, and
furnish both the language and the ideas. As usual with Mrs. Eddy, the
connection affords no help--"echoing" throws no light upon "scribe." A
rock can reflect an echo, a wall can do it, a mountain can do it, many
things can do it, but a scribe can't. A scribe that could reflect an
echo could get over thirty dollars a week in a side-show. Many
impresarios would rather have him than a cow with four tails. If we
allow that this present scribe was setting down the "harmonies of
Heaven"--and certainly that seems to have been the case then there was
only one way to do it that I can think of: listen to the music and put
down the notes one after another as they fell. In that case Mrs. Eddy
did not invent the tune, she only entered it on paper. Therefore
dropping the metaphor--she was merely an amanuensis, and furnished
neither the language of Science and Health nor the ideas. It reduces her
to eight per cent. (and the dividends on that and the rest).
Is that it? We shall never know. For Mrs. Eddy is liable to testify
again at any time. But until she does it, I think we must conclude that
the Deity was Author of the whole book, and Mrs. Eddy merely His
telephone and stenographer. Granting this, her claim as the Voice of God
stands-for the present--justified and established.
POSTSCRIPT
I overlooked something. It appears that there was more of that utterance
than Mr. Peabody has quoted in the above paragraph. It will be found in
Mrs. Eddy's organ, the Christian Science Journal (January, 1901) and
reads as follows:
"It was not myself . . . which dictated Science and Health, with Key
to the Scriptures."
That is certainly clear enough. The words which I have removed from that
important sentence explain Who it was that did the dictating. It was
done by
"the divine power of Truth and Love, infinitely above me."
Certainly that is definite. At last, through her personal testimony, we
have a sure grip upon the following vital facts, and they settle the
authorship of Science and Health beyond peradventure:
1. Mrs. Eddy furnished "the ideas and the language."
2. God furnished the ideas and the language.
It is a great comfort to have the matter authoritatively settled.
CHAPTER V
It is hard to locate her, she shifts about so much. She is a shining
drop of quicksilver which you put your finger on and it isn't there.
There is a paragraph in the Autobiography (page 96) which places in
seemingly darkly significant procession three Personages:
1. The Virgin Mary
2. Jesus of Nazareth.
3. Mrs. Eddy.
This is the paragraph referred to:
"No person can take the individual place of the Virgin Mary. No person
can compass or fulfil the individual mission of Jesus of Nazareth. No
person can take the place of the author of Science and Health, the
discoverer and founder of Christian Science. Each individual must fill
his own niche in time and eternity."
I have read it many times, but I still cannot be sure that I rightly
understand it. If the Saviour's name had been placed first and the
Virgin Mary's second and Mrs. Eddy's third, I should draw the inference
that a descending scale from First Importance to Second Importance and
then to Small Importance was indicated; but to place the Virgin first,
the Saviour second, and Mrs. Eddy third, seems to turn the scale the
other way and make it an ascending scale of Importances, with Mrs. Eddy
ranking the other two and holding first place.
I think that that was perhaps the intention, but none but a seasoned
Christian Scientist can examine a literary animal of Mrs. Eddy's creation
and tell which end of it the tail is on. She is easily the most baffling
and bewildering writer in the literary trade.
Eddy is a commonplace name, and would have an unimpressive aspect in the
list of the reformed Holy Family. She has thought of that. In the book
of By-laws written by her--"impelled by a power not one's own"--there is
a paragraph which explains how and when her disciples came to confer a
title upon her; and this explanation is followed by a warning as to what
will happen to any female Scientist who shall desecrate it:
"The title of Mother. Therefore if a student of Christian Science shall
apply this title, either to herself or to others, except as the term for
kinship according to the flesh, it shall be regarded by the Church as an
indication of disrespect for their Pastor Emeritus, and unfitness to be a
member of the Mother-Church."
She is the Pastor Emeritus.
While the quoted paragraph about the Procession seems to indicate that
Mrs. Eddy is expecting to occupy the First Place in it, that expectation
is not definitely avowed. In an earlier utterance of hers she is
clearer--clearer, and does not claim the first place all to herself, but
only the half of it. I quote from Mr. Peabody's book again:
"In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her
property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her
sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to
establish the claim.
"Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf that she
herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus."
In her Miscellaneous Writings (using her once favorite "We" for "I") she
says that "While we entertain decided views . . . and shall express
them as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine
origin," etc.
Our divine origin. It suggests Equal again. It is inferable, then, that
in the near by-and-by the new Church will officially rank the Holy Family
in the following order:
1. Jesus of Nazareth.--1. Our Mother.
2. The Virgin Mary.
SUMMARY
I am not playing with Christian Science and its founder, I am examining
them; and I am doing it because of the interest I feel in the inquiry.
My results may seem inadequate to the reader, but they have for me
clarified a muddle and brought a sort of order out of a chaos, and so I
value them.
My readings of Mrs. Eddy's uninspired miscellaneous literary efforts have
convinced me of several things:
1. That she did not write Science and Health.
2. That the Deity did (or did not) write it.
3. That She thinks She wrote it.
4. That She believes She wrote it under the Deity's inspiration.
5. That She believes She is a Member of the Holy Family.
6. That She believes She is the equal of the Head of it.
Finally, I think She is now entitled to the capital S--on her own
evidence.
CHAPTER VI
Thus far we have a part of Mrs. Eddy's portrait. Not made of fictions,
surmises, reports, rumors, innuendoes, dropped by her enemies; no, she
has furnished all of the materials herself, and laid them on the canvas,
under my general superintendence and direction. As far as she has gone
with it, it is the presentation of a complacent, commonplace, illiterate
New England woman who "forgot everything she knew" when she discovered
her discovery, then wrote a Bible in good English under the inspiration
of God, and climbed up it to the supremest summit of earthly grandeur
attainable by man--where she sits serene to-day, beloved and worshiped by
a multitude of human beings of as good average intelligence as is
possessed by those that march under the banner of any competing cult.
This is not intended to flatter the competing cults, it is merely a
statement of cold fact.
That a commonplace person should go climbing aloft and become a god or a
half-god or a quarter-god and be worshiped by men and women of average
intelligence, is nothing. It has happened a million times, it will
happen a hundred million more. It has been millions of years since the
first of these supernaturals appeared, and by the time the last one in
that inconceivably remote future shall have performed his solemn little
high-jinks on the stage and closed the business, there will be enough of
them accumulated in the museum on the Other Side to start a heaven of
their own-and jam it.
Each in his turn those little supernaturals of our by-gone ages and aeons
joined the monster procession of his predecessors and marched
horizonward, disappeared, and was forgotten. They changed nothing, they
built nothing, they left nothing behind them to remember them by, nothing
to hold their disciples together, nothing to solidify their work and
enable it to defy the assaults of time and the weather. They passed, and
left a vacancy. They made one fatal mistake; they all made it, each in
his turn: they failed to organize their forces, they failed to centralize
their strength, they failed to provide a fresh Bible and a sure and
perpetual cash income for business, and often they failed to provide a
new and accepted Divine Personage to worship.
Mrs. Eddy is not of that small fry. The materials that go to the making
of the rest of her portrait will prove it. She will furnish them
herself:
She published her book. She copyrighted it. She copyrights everything.
If she should say, "Good-morning; how do you do?" she would copyright it;
for she is a careful person, and knows the value of small things.
She began to teach her Science, she began to heal, she began to gather
converts to her new religion--fervent, sincere, devoted, grateful people.
A year or two later she organized her first Christian Science
"Association," with six of her disciples on the roster.
She continued to teach and heal. She was charging nothing, she says,
although she was very poor. She taught and healed gratis four years
altogether, she says.
Then, in 1879-81 she was become strong enough, and well enough
established, to venture a couple of impressively important moves. The
first of these moves was to aggrandize the "Association" to a "Church."
Brave? It is the right name for it, I think. The former name suggests
nothing, invited no remark, no criticism, no inquiry, no hostility; the
new name invited them all. She must have made this intrepid venture on
her own motion. She could have had no important advisers at that early
day. If we accept it as her own idea and her own act--and I think we
must--we have one key to her character. And it will explain subsequent
acts of hers that would merely stun us and stupefy us without it. Shall
we call it courage? Or shall we call it recklessness? Courage observes;
reflects; calculates; surveys the whole situation; counts the cost,
estimates the odds, makes up its mind; then goes at the enterprise
resolute to win or perish. Recklessness does not reflect, it plunges
fearlessly in with a hurrah, and takes the risks, whatever they may be,
regardless of expense. Recklessness often fails, Mrs. Eddy has never
failed--from the point of view of her followers. The point of view of
other people is naturally not a matter of weighty importance to her.
The new Church was not born loose-jointed and featureless, but had a
defined plan, a definite character, definite aims, and a name which was a
challenge, and defied all comers. It was "a Mind-healing Church." It
was "without a creed." Its name, "The Church of Christ, Scientist."
Mrs. Eddy could not copyright her Church, but she chartered it, which was
the same thing and relieved the pain. It had twenty-six charter members.
Mrs. Eddy was at once installed as its pastor.
The other venture, above referred to, was Mrs. Eddy's Massachusetts
Metaphysical College, in which was taught "the pathology of spiritual
power." She could not copyright it, but she got it chartered. For
faculty it had herself, her husband of the period (Dr. Eddy), and her
adopted son, Dr. Foster-Eddy. The college term was "barely three
weeks," she says. Again she was bold, brave, rash, reckless--choose for
yourself--for she not only began to charge the student, but charged him a
hundred dollars a week for the enlightenments. And got it? some may
ask. Easily. Pupils flocked from far and near. They came by the
hundred. Presently the term was cut down nearly half, but the price
remained as before. To be exact, the term-cut was to seven lessons
--price, three hundred dollars. The college "yielded a large income."
This is believable. In seven years Mrs. Eddy taught, as she avers, over
four thousand students in it. (Preface to 1902 edition of Science and
Health.) Three hundred times four thousand is--but perhaps you can cipher
it yourself. I could do it ordinarily, but I fell down yesterday and
hurt my leg. Cipher it; you will see that it is a grand sum for a woman
to earn in seven years. Yet that was not all she got out of her college
in the seven.
At the time that she was charging the primary student three hundred
dollars for twelve lessons she was not content with this tidy assessment,
but had other ways of plundering him. By advertisement she offered him
privileges whereby he could add eighteen lessons to his store for five
hundred dollars more. That is to say, he could get a total of thirty
lessons in her college for eight hundred dollars.
Four thousand times eight hundred is--but it is a difficult sum for a
cripple who has not been "demonstrated over" to cipher; let it go. She
taught "over" four thousand students in seven years. "Over" is not
definite, but it probably represents a non-paying surplus of learners
over and above the paying four thousand. Charity students, doubtless. I
think that as interesting an advertisement as has been printed since the
romantic old days of the other buccaneers is this one from the Christian
Science Journal for September, 1886:
"MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE
"Rev. MARY BAKER G. EDDY, PRESIDENT
"571 Columbus Avenue, Boston
"The collegiate course in Christian Science metaphysical healing includes
twelve lessons. Tuition, three hundred dollars.
"Course in metaphysical obstetrics includes six daily lectures, and is
open only to students from this college. Tuition, one hundred dollars.
"Class in theology, open (like the above) to graduates, receives six
additional lectures on the Scriptures, and summary of the principle and
practice of Christian Science, two hundred dollars.
"Normal class is open to those who have taken the first course at this
college; six daily lectures complete the Normal course. Tuition, two
hundred dollars.
"No invalids, and only persons of good moral character, are accepted as
students. All students are subject to examination and rejection; and
they are liable to leave the class if found unfit to remain in it.
"A limited number of clergymen received free of charge.
"Largest discount to indigent students, one hundred dollars on the first
course.
"No deduction on the others.
"Husband and wife, entered together, three hundred dollars.
"Tuition for all strictly in advance."
There it is--the horse-leech's daughter alive again, after a
three-century vacation. Fifty or sixty hours' lecturing for eight
hundred dollars.
I was in error as to one matter: there are no charity students.
Gratis-taught clergymen must not be placed under that head; they are
merely an advertisement. Pauper students can get into the infant class
on a two-third rate (cash in advance), but not even an archangel can get
into the rest of the game at anything short of par, cash down. For it is
"in the spirit of Christ's charity, as one who is joyful to hear healing
to the sick" that Mrs. Eddy is working the game. She sends the healing
to them outside. She cannot bear it to them inside the college, for the
reason that she does not allow a sick candidate to get in. It is true
that this smells of inconsistency, but that is nothing; Mrs. Eddy would
not be Mrs. Eddy if she should ever chance to be consistent about
anything two days running.
Except in the matter of the Dollar. The Dollar, and appetite for power
and notoriety. English must also be added; she is always consistent, she
is always Mrs. Eddy, in her English: it is always and consistently
confused and crippled and poor. She wrote the Advertisement; her
literary trade-marks are there. When she says all "students" are subject
to examination, she does not mean students, she means candidates for that
lofty place When she says students are "liable" to leave the class if
found unfit to remain in it, she does not mean that if they find
themselves unfit, or be found unfit by others, they will be likely to ask
permission to leave the class; she means that if she finds them unfit she
will be "liable" to fire them out. When she nobly offers "tuition for
all strictly in advance," she does not mean "instruction for all in
advance-payment for it later." No, that is only what she says, it is not
what she means. If she had written Science and Health, the oldest man in
the world would not be able to tell with certainty what any passage in it
was intended to mean.
Her Church was on its legs.
She was its pastor. It was prospering.
She was appointed one of a committee to draught By-laws for its
government. It may be observed, without overplus of irreverence, that
this was larks for her. She did all of the draughting herself. From the
very beginning she was always in the front seat when there was business
to be done; in the front seat, with both eyes open, and looking sharply
out for Number One; in the front seat, working Mortal Mind with fine
effectiveness and giving Immortal Mind a rest for Sunday. When her
Church was reorganized, by-and-by, the By-laws were retained. She saw to
that. In these Laws for the government of her Church, her empire, her
despotism, Mrs. Eddy's character is embalmed for good and all. I think a
particularized examination of these Church-laws will be found
interesting. And not the less so if we keep in mind that they were
"impelled by a power not one's own," as she says--Anglice--the
inspiration of God.
It is a Church "without a creed." Still, it has one. Mrs. Eddy
draughted it--and copyrighted it. In her own name. You cannot become a
member of the Mother-Church (nor of any Christian Science Church) without
signing it. It forms the first chapter of the By-laws, and is called
"Tenets." "Tenets of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ,
Scientist." It has no hell in it--it throws it overboard.
THE PASTOR EMERITUS
About the time of the reorganization, Mrs. Eddy retired from her position
of pastor of her Church, abolished the office of pastor in all branch
Churches, and appointed her book, Science and Health, to be
pastor-universal. Mrs. Eddy did not disconnect herself from the office
entirely, when she retired, but appointed herself Pastor Emeritus. It is
a misleading title, and belongs to the family of that phrase "without a
creed." It advertises her as being a merely honorary official, with
nothing to do, and no authority. The Czar of Russia is Emperor Emeritus
on the same terms. Mrs. Eddy was Autocrat of the Church before, with
limitless authority, and she kept her grip on that limitless authority
when she took that fictitious title.
It is curious and interesting to note with what an unerring instinct the
Pastor Emeritus has thought out and forecast all possible encroachments
upon her planned autocracy, and barred the way against them, in the
By-laws which she framed and copyrighted--under the guidance of the
Supreme Being.
THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
For instance, when Article I. speaks of a President and Board of
Directors, you think you have discovered a formidable check upon the
powers and ambitions of the honorary pastor, the ornamental pastor, the
functionless pastor, the Pastor Emeritus, but it is a mistake. These
great officials are of the phrase--family of the Church-Without-a-Creed
and the Pastor-With-Nothing-to-Do; that is to say, of the family of
Large-Names-Which-Mean-Nothing. The Board is of so little consequence
that the By-laws do not state how it is chosen, nor who does it; but they
do state, most definitely, that the Board cannot fill a vacancy in its
number "except the candidate is approved by the Pastor Emeritus."
The "candidate." The Board cannot even proceed to an election until the
Pastor Emeritus has examined the list and squelched such candidates as
are not satisfactory to her.
Whether the original first Board began as the personal property of Mrs.
Eddy or not, it is foreseeable that in time, under this By-law, she would
own it. Such a first Board might chafe under such a rule as that, and
try to legislate it out of existence some day. But Mrs. Eddy was awake.
She foresaw that danger, and added this ingenious and effective clause:
"This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by consent of
Mrs. Eddy, the Pastor Emeritus."
THE PRESIDENT
The Board of Directors, or Serfs, or Ciphers, elects the President.
On these clearly worded terms: "Subject to the approval of the Pastor
Emeritus."
Therefore She elects him.
A long term can invest a high official with influence and power, and make
him dangerous. Mrs. Eddy reflected upon that; so she limits the
President's term to a year. She has a capable commercial head, an
organizing head, a head for government.
TREASURER AND CLERK
There are a Treasurer and a Clerk. They are elected by the Board of
Directors. That is to say, by Mrs. Eddy.
Their terms of office expire on the first Tuesday in June of each year,
"or upon the election of their successors." They must be watchfully
obedient and satisfactory to her, or she will elect and install their
successors with a suddenness that can be unpleasant to them. It goes
without saying that the Treasurer manages the Treasury to suit Mrs. Eddy,
and is in fact merely Temporary Deputy Treasurer.
Apparently the Clerk has but two duties to perform: to read messages from
Mrs. Eddy to First Members assembled in solemn Council, and provide lists
of candidates for Church membership. The select body entitled First
Members are the aristocracy of the Mother-Church, the Charter Members,
the Aborigines, a sort of stylish but unsalaried little College of
Cardinals, good for show, but not indispensable. Nobody is indispensable
in Mrs. Eddy's empire; she sees to that.
When the Pastor Emeritus sends a letter or message to that little
Sanhedrin, it is the Clerk's "imperative duty" to read it "at the place
and time specified." Otherwise, the world might come to an end. These
are fine, large frills, and remind us of the ways of emperors and such.
Such do not use the penny-post, they send a gilded and painted special
messenger, and he strides into the Parliament, and business comes to a
sudden and solemn and awful stop; and in the impressive hush that
follows, the Chief Clerk reads the document. It is his "imperative
duty." If he should neglect it, his official life would end. It is the
same with this Mother-Church Clerk; "if he fail to perform this important
function of his office," certain majestic and unshirkable solemnities
must follow: a special meeting "shall" be called; a member of the Church
"shall" make formal complaint; then the Clerk "shall" be "removed from
office." Complaint is sufficient, no trial is necessary.
There is something very sweet and juvenile and innocent and pretty about
these little tinsel vanities, these grave apings of monarchical fuss and
feathers and ceremony, here on our ostentatiously democratic soil. She
is the same lady that we found in the Autobiography, who was so naively
vain of all that little ancestral military riffraff that she had dug up
and annexed. A person's nature never changes. What it is in childhood,
it remains. Under pressure, or a change of interest, it can partially or
wholly disappear from sight, and for considerable stretches of time, but
nothing can ever permanently modify it, nothing can ever remove it.
BOARD OF TRUSTEES
There isn't any--now. But with power and money piling up higher and
higher every day and the Church's dominion spreading daily wider and
farther, a time could come when the envious and ambitious could start
the idea that it would be wise and well to put a watch upon these assets
--a watch equipped with properly large authority. By custom, a Board of
Trustees. Mrs. Eddy has foreseen that probability--for she is a woman
with a long, long look ahead, the longest look ahead that ever a woman
had--and she has provided for that emergency. In Art. I., Sec. 5, she
has decreed that no Board of Trustees shall ever exist in the
Mother-Church "except it be constituted by the Pastor Emeritus."
The magnificence of it, the daring of it! Thus far, she is:
The Massachusetts Metaphysical College;
Pastor Emeritus;
President;
Board of Directors;
Treasurer;
Clerk;
and future Board of Trustees;
and is still moving onward, ever onward. When I contemplate her from a
commercial point of view, there are no words that can convey my
admiration of her.
READERS
These are a feature of first importance in the church-machinery of
Christian Science. For they occupy the pulpit. They hold the place that
the preacher holds in the other Christian Churches. They hold that
place, but they do not preach. Two of them are on duty at a time--a man
and a woman. One reads a passage from the Bible, the other reads the
explanation of it from Science and Health--and so they go on alternating.
This constitutes the service--this, with choir-music. They utter no word
of their own. Art. IV., Sec. 6, closes their mouths with this
uncompromising gag:
"They shall make no remarks explanatory of the Lesson-Sermon at any time
during the service."
It seems a simple little thing. One is not startled by it at a first
reading of it; nor at the second, nor the third. One may have to read it
a dozen times before the whole magnitude of it rises before the mind. It
far and away oversizes and outclasses the best business-idea yet invented
for the safe-guarding and perpetuating of a religion. If it had been
thought of and put in force eighteen hundred and seventy years ago, there
would be but one Christian sect in the world now, instead of ten dozens
of them.
There are many varieties of men in the world, consequently there are many
varieties of minds in its pulpits. This insures many differing
interpretations of important Scripture texts, and this in turn insures
the splitting up of a religion into many sects. It is what has happened;
it was sure to happen.
Mrs. Eddy has noted this disastrous result of preaching, and has put up
the bars. She will have no preaching in her Church. She has explained
all essential Scriptures, and set the explanations down in her book. In
her belief her underlings cannot improve upon those explanations, and in
that stern sentence "they shall make no explanatory remarks" she has
barred them for all time from trying. She will be obeyed; there is no
question about that.
In arranging her government she has borrowed ideas from various sources
--not poor ones, but the best in the governmental market--but this one is
new, this one came out of no ordinary business-head, this one must have
come out of her own, there has been no other commercial skull in a
thousand centuries that was equal to it. She has borrowed freely and
wisely, but I am sure that this idea is many times larger than all her
borrowings bulked together. One must respect the business-brain that
produced it--the splendid pluck and impudence that ventured to promulgate
it, anyway.
ELECTION OF READERS
Readers are not taken at hap-hazard, any more than preachers are taken at
hap-hazard for the pulpits of other sects. No, Readers are elected by
the Board of Directors. But--
"Section 3. The Board shall inform the Pas. for Emeritus of the names
of candidates for Readers before they are elected, and if she objects to
the nomination, said candidates shall not be chosen."
Is that an election--by the Board? Thus far I have not been able to find
out what that Board of Spectres is for. It certainly has no real
function, no duty which the hired girl could not perform, no office
beyond the mere recording of the autocrat's decrees.
There are no dangerously long office-terms in Mrs. Eddy's government.
The Readers are elected for but one year. This insures their
subserviency to their proprietor.
Readers are not allowed to copy out passages and read them from the
manuscript in the pulpit; they must read from Mrs. Eddy's book itself.
She is right. Slight changes could be slyly made, repeated, and in time
get acceptance with congregations. Branch sects could grow out of these
practices. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race, and how far to trust it. Her
limit is not over a quarter of an inch. It is all that a wise person
will risk.
Mrs. Eddy's inborn disposition to copyright everything, charter
everything, secure the rightful and proper credit to herself for
everything she does, and everything she thinks she does, and everything
she thinks, and everything she thinks she thinks or has thought or
intends to think, is illustrated in Sec. 5 of Art. IV., defining the
duties of official Readers--in church:
"Naming Book and Author. The Reader of Science and Health, with Key to
the Scriptures, before commencing to read from this book, shall
distinctly announce its full title and give the author's name."
Otherwise the congregation might get the habit of forgetting who
(ostensibly) wrote the book.
THE ARISTOCRACY
This consists of First Members and their apostolic succession. It is a
close corporation, and its membership limit is one hundred. Forty will
answer, but if the number fall below that, there must be an election, to
fill the grand quorum.
This Sanhedrin can't do anything of the slightest importance, but it can
talk. It can "discuss." That is, it can discuss "important questions
relative to Church members", evidently persons who are already Church
members. This affords it amusement, and does no harm.
It can "fix the salaries of the Readers."
Twice a year it "votes on" admitting candidates. That is, for Church
membership. But its work is cut out for it beforehand, by Art. IX.:
"Every recommendation for membership In the Church 'shall be
countersigned by a loyal student of Mrs. Eddy's, by a Director of this
Church, or by a First Member.'"
All these three classes of beings are the personal property of Mrs. Eddy.
She has absolute control of the elections.
Also it must "transact any Church business that may properly come before
it."
"Properly" is a thoughtful word. No important business can come before
it. The By laws have attended to that. No important business goes
before any one for the final word except Mrs. Eddy. She has looked to
that.
The Sanhedrin "votes on" candidates for admission to its own body. But
is its vote worth any more than mine would be? No, it isn't. Sec. 4,
of Art. V.--Election of First Members--makes this quite plain:
"Before being elected, the candidates for First Members shall be approved
by the Pastor Emeritus over her own signature."
Thus the Sanhedrin is the personal property of Mrs. Eddy. She owns it.
It has no functions, no authority, no real existence. It is another
Board of Shadows. Mrs. Eddy is the Sanhedrin herself.
But it is time to foot up again and "see where we are at." Thus far,
Mrs. Eddy is
The Massachusetts Metaphysical College;
Pastor Emeritus,
President;
Board of Directors;
Treasurer;
Clerk;
Future Board of Trustees;
Proprietor of the Priesthood:
Dictator of the Services;
Proprietor of the Sanhedrin. She has come far, and is still on her way.
CHURCH MEMBERSHIP
In this Article there is another exhibition of a couple of the large
features of Mrs. Eddy's remarkable make-up: her business-talent and her
knowledge of human nature.
She does not beseech and implore people to join her Church. She knows
the human race better than that. She gravely goes through the motions of
reluctantly granting admission to the applicant as a favor to him. The
idea is worth untold shekels. She does not stand at the gate of the fold
with welcoming arms spread, and receive the lost sheep with glad emotion
and set up the fatted calf and invite the neighbor and have a time. No,
she looks upon him coldly, she snubs him, she says:
"Who are you? Who is your sponsor? Who asked you to come here? Go
away, and don't come again until you are invited."
It is calculated to strikingly impress a person accustomed to Moody and
Sankey and Sam Jones revivals; accustomed to brain-turning appeals to the
unknown and unendorsed sinner to come forward and enter into the joy,
etc.--"just as he is"; accustomed to seeing him do it; accustomed to
seeing him pass up the aisle through sobbing seas of welcome, and love,
and congratulation, and arrive at the mourner's bench and be received
like a long-lost government bond.
No, there is nothing of that kind in Mrs. Eddy's system. She knows that
if you wish to confer upon a human being something which he is not sure
he wants, the best way is to make it apparently difficult for him to get
it--then he is no son of Adam if that apple does not assume an interest
in his eyes which it lacked before. In time this interest can grow into
desire. Mrs. Eddy knows that when you cannot get a man to try--free of
cost--a new and effective remedy for a disease he is afflicted with, you
can generally sell it to him if you will put a price upon it which he
cannot afford. When, in the beginning, she taught Christian Science
gratis (for good reasons), pupils were few and reluctant, and required
persuasion; it was when she raised the limit to three hundred dollars for
a dollar's worth that she could not find standing room for the invasion
of pupils that followed.
With fine astuteness she goes through the motions of making it difficult
to get membership in her Church. There is a twofold value in this
system: it gives membership a high value in the eyes of the applicant;
and at the same time the requirements exacted enable Mrs. Eddy to keep
him out if she has doubts about his value to her. A word further as to
applications for membership:
"Applications of students of the Metaphysical College must be signed by
the Board of Directors."
That is safe. Mrs. Eddy is proprietor of that Board.
Children of twelve may be admitted if invited by "one of Mrs. Eddy's
loyal students, or by a First Member, or by a Director."
These sponsors are the property of Mrs. Eddy, therefore her Church is
safeguarded from the intrusion of undesirable children.
Other Students. Applicants who have not studied with Mrs. Eddy can get
in only "by invitation and recommendation from students of Mrs. Eddy....
or from members of the Mother-Church."
Other paragraphs explain how two or three other varieties of applicants
are to be challenged and obstructed, and tell us who is authorized to
invite them, recommend them endorse them, and all that.
The safeguards are definite, and would seem to be sufficiently strenuous
--to Mr. Sam Jones, at any rate. Not for Mrs. Eddy. She adds this
clincher:
"The candidates be elected by a majority vote of the First Members
present."
That is the aristocracy, the aborigines, the Sanhedrin. It is Mrs.
Eddy's property. She herself is the Sanhedrin. No one can get into the
Church if she wishes to keep him out.
This veto power could some time or other have a large value for her,
therefore she was wise to reserve it.
It is likely that it is not frequently used. It is also probable that
the difficulties attendant upon getting admission to membership have been
instituted more to invite than to deter, more to enhance the value of
membership and make people long for it than to make it really difficult
to get. I think so, because the Mother. Church has many thousands of
members more than its building can accommodate.
AND SOME ENGLISH REQUIRED
Mrs. Eddy is very particular as regards one detail curiously so, for her,
all things considered. The Church Readers must be "good English
scholars"; they must be "thorough English scholars."
She is thus sensitive about the English of her subordinates for cause,
possibly. In her chapter defining the duties of the Clerk there is an
indication that she harbors resentful memories of an occasion when the
hazy quality of her own English made unforeseen and mortifying trouble:
"Understanding Communications. Sec. 2. If the Clerk of this Church
shall receive a communication from the Pastor Emeritus which he does not
fully understand, he shall inform her of this fact before presenting it
to the Church, and obtain a clear understanding of the matter--then act
in accordance therewith."
She should have waited to calm down, then, but instead she added this,
which lacks sugar:
"Failing to adhere to this By-law, the Clerk must resign."
I wish I could see that communication that broke the camel's back. It
was probably the one beginning: "What plague spot or bacilli were gnawing
at the heart of this metropolis and bringing it on bended knee?" and I
think it likely that the kindly disposed Clerk tried to translate it into
English and lost his mind and had to go to the hospital. That Bylaw was
not the offspring of a forecast, an intuition, it was certainly born of a
sorrowful experience. Its temper gives the fact away.
The little book of By-laws has manifestly been tinkered by one of Mrs.
Eddy's "thorough English scholars," for in the majority of cases its
meanings are clear. The book is not even marred by Mrs. Eddy's peculiar
specialty--lumbering clumsinesses of speech. I believe the salaried
polisher has weeded them all out but one. In one place, after referring
to Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy goes on to say "the Bible and the
above-named book, with other works by the same author," etc.
It is an unfortunate sentence, for it could mislead a hasty or careless
reader for a moment. Mrs. Eddy framed it--it is her very own--it bears
her trade-mark. "The Bible and Science and Health, with other works by
the same author," could have come from no literary vacuum but the one
which produced the remark (in the Autobiography): "I remember reading, in
my childhood, certain manuscripts containing Scriptural Sonnets, besides
other verses and enigmas."
We know what she means, in both instances, but a low-priced Clerk would
not necessarily know, and on a salary like his he could quite excusably
aver that the Pastor Emeritus had commanded him to come and make
proclamation that she was author of the Bible, and that she was thinking
of discharging some Scriptural sonnets and other enigmas upon the
congregation. It could lose him his place, but it would not be fair, if
it happened before the edict about "Understanding Communications" was
promulgated.
"READERS" AGAIN
The By-law book makes a showy pretence of orderliness and system, but it
is only a pretence. I will not go so far as to say it is a harum-scarum
jumble, for it is not that, but I think it fair to say it is at least
jumbulacious in places. For instance, Articles III. and IV. set forth
in much detail the qualifications and duties of Readers, she then skips
some thirty pages and takes up the subject again. It looks like
slovenliness, but it may be only art. The belated By-law has a
sufficiently quiet look, but it has a ton of dynamite in it. It makes
all the Christian Science Church Readers on the globe the personal
chattels of Mrs. Eddy. Whenever she chooses, she can stretch her long
arm around the world's fat belly and flirt a Reader out of his pulpit,
though he be tucked away in seeming safety and obscurity in a lost
village in the middle of China:
"In any Church. Sec. 2. The Pastor Emeritus of the Mother-Church shall
have the right (through a letter addressed to the individual and Church
of which he is the Reader) to remove a Reader from this office in any
Church of Christ, Scientist, both in America and in foreign nations; or
to appoint the Reader to fill any office belonging to the Christian
Science denomination."
She does not have to prefer charges against him, she does not have to
find him lazy, careless, incompetent, untidy, ill-mannered, unholy,
dishonest, she does not have to discover a fault of any kind in him, she
does not have to tell him nor his congregation why she dismisses and
disgraces him and insults his meek flock, she does not have to explain to
his family why she takes the bread out of their mouths and turns them
out-of-doors homeless and ashamed in a strange land; she does not have to
do anything but send a letter and say: "Pack!--and ask no questions!"
Has the Pope this power?--the other Pope--the one in Rome. Has he
anything approaching it? Can he turn a priest out of his pulpit and
strip him of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a caprice,
and meanwhile furnishing no reasons to the parish? Not in America. And
not elsewhere, we may believe.
It is odd and strange, to see intelligent and educated people among us
worshipping this self-seeking and remorseless tyrant as a God. This
worship is denied--by persons who are themselves worshippers of Mrs.
Eddy. I feel quite sure that it is a worship which will continue during
ages.
That Mrs. Eddy wrote that amazing By-law with her own hand we have much
better evidence than her word. We have her English. It is there. It
cannot be imitated. She ought never to go to the expense of copyrighting
her verbal discharges. When any one tries to claim them she should call
me; I can always tell them from any other literary apprentice's at a
glance. It was like her to call America a "nation"; she would call a
sand-bar a nation if it should fall into a sentence in which she was
speaking of peoples, for she would not know how to untangle it and get it
out and classify it by itself. And the closing arrangement of that
By-law is in true Eddysonian form, too. In it she reserves authority to
make a Reader fill any office connected with a Science church-sexton,
grave-digger, advertising-agent, Annex-polisher, leader of the choir,
President, Director, Treasurer, Clerk, etc. She did not mean that. She
already possessed that authority. She meant to clothe herself with
power, despotic and unchallengeable, to appoint all Science Readers to
their offices, both at home and abroad. The phrase "or to appoint" is
another miscarriage of intention; she did not mean "or," she meant "and."
That By-law puts into Mrs. Eddy's hands absolute command over the most
formidable force and influence existent in the Christian Science kingdom
outside of herself, and it does this unconditionally and (by auxiliary
force of Laws already quoted) irrevocably. Still, she is not quite
satisfied. Something might happen, she doesn't know what. Therefore she
drives in one more nail, to make sure, and drives it deep:
"This By-law can neither be amended nor annulled, except by consent of
the Pastor Emeritus."
Let some one with a wild and delirious fancy try and see if he can
imagine her furnishing that consent.
MONOPOLY OF SPIRITUAL BREAD
Very properly, the first qualification for membership in the
Mother-Church is belief in the doctrines of Christian Science.
But these doctrines must not be gathered from secondary sources. There
is but one recognized source. The candidate must be a believer in the
doctrines of Christian Science "according to the platform and teaching
contained in the Christian Science text-book, 'Science and Health, with
Key to the Scriptures,' by Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy."
That is definite, and is final. There are to be no commentaries, no
labored volumes of exposition and explanation by anybody except Mrs.
Eddy. Because such things could sow error, create warring opinions,
split the religion into sects, and disastrously cripple its power. Mrs.
Eddy will do the whole of the explaining, Herself--has done it, in fact.
She has written several books. They are to be had (for cash in advance),
they are all sacred; additions to them can never be needed and will never
be permitted. They tell the candidate how to instruct himself, how to
teach others, how to do all things comprised in the business--and they
close the door against all would-be competitors, and monopolize the
trade:
"The Bible and the above--named book [Science and Health], with other
works by the same author," must be his only text-books for the commerce
--he cannot forage outside.
Mrs. Eddy's words are to be the sole elucidators of the Bible and Science
and Health--forever. Throughout the ages, whenever there is doubt as to
the meaning of a passage in either of these books the inquirer will not
dream of trying to explain it to himself; he would shudder at the thought
of such temerity, such profanity, he would be haled to the Inquisition
and thence to the public square and the stake if he should be caught
studying into text-meanings on his own hook; he will be prudent and seek
the meanings at the only permitted source, Mrs. Eddy's commentaries.
Value of this Strait-jacket. One must not underrate the magnificence of
this long-headed idea, one must not underestimate its giant possibilities
in the matter of trooping the Church solidly together and keeping it so.
It squelches independent inquiry, and makes such a thing impossible,
profane, criminal, it authoritatively settles every dispute that can
arise. It starts with finality--a point which the Roman Church has
travelled towards fifteen or sixteen centuries, stage by stage, and has
not yet reached. The matter of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
Mary was not authoritatively settled until the days of Pius IX.
--yesterday, so to speak.
As already noticed, the Protestants are broken up into a long array of
sects, a result of disputes about the meanings of texts, disputes made
unavoidable by the absence of an infallible authority to submit doubtful
passages to. A week or two ago (I am writing in the middle of January,
1903), the clergy and others hereabouts had a warm dispute in the papers
over this question: Did Jesus anywhere claim to be God? It seemed an
easy question, but it turned out to be a hard one. It was ably and
elaborately discussed, by learned men of several denominations, but in
the end it remained unsettled.
A week ago, another discussion broke out. It was over this text:
"Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor."
One verdict was worded as follows:
"When Christ answered the rich young man and said for him to give to the
poor all he possessed or he could not gain everlasting life, He did not
mean it in the literal sense. My interpretation of His words is that we
should part with what comes between us and Christ.
"There is no doubt that Jesus believed that the rich young man thought
more of his wealth than he did of his soul, and, such being the case, it
was his duty to give up the wealth.
"Every one of us knows that there is something we should give up for
Christ. Those who are true believers and followers know what they have
given up, and those who are not yet followers know down in their hearts
what they must give up."
Ten clergymen of various denominations were interviewed, and nine of them
agreed with that verdict. That did not settle the matter, because the
tenth said the language of Jesus was so strait and definite that it
explained itself: "Sell all," not a percentage.
There is a most unusual feature about that dispute: the nine persons who
decided alike, quoted not a single authority in support of their
position. I do not know when I have seen trained disputants do the like
of that before. The nine merely furnished their own opinions, founded
upon--nothing at all. In the other dispute ("Did Jesus anywhere claim to
be God?") the same kind of men--trained and learned clergymen--backed up
their arguments with chapter and verse. On both sides. Plenty of
verses. Were no reinforcing verses to be found in the present case? It
looks that way.
The opinion of the nine seems strange to me, for it is unsupported by
authority, while there was at least constructive authority for the
opposite view.
It is hair-splitting differences of opinion over disputed text-meanings
that have divided into many sects a once united Church. One may infer
from some of the names in the following list that some of the differences
are very slight--so slight as to be not distinctly important, perhaps
--yet they have moved groups to withdraw from communions to which they
belonged and set up a sect of their own. The list--accompanied by
various Church statistics for 1902, compiled by Rev. Dr. H. K.
Carroll--was published, January 8, 1903, in the New York Christian
Advocate:
Adventists (6 bodies), Baptists (13 bodies), Brethren (Plymouth) (4
bodies), Brethren (River) (3 bodies), Catholics (8 bodies), Catholic
Apostolic, Christadelphians, Christian Connection, Christian Catholics,
Christian Missionary Association, Christian Scientists, Church of God
(Wine-brennarian), Church of the New Jerusalem, Congregationalists,
Disciples of Christ, Dunkards (4 bodies), Evangelical (2 bodies), Friends
(4 bodies), Friends of the Temple, German Evangelical Protestant, German
Evangelical Synod, Independent congregations, Jews (2 bodies), Latter-day
Saints (2 bodies), Lutherans (22 bodies), Mennonites (12 bodies),
Methodists (17 bodies), Moravians, Presbyterians (12 bodies), Protestant
Episcopal (2 bodies), Reformed (3 bodies), Schwenkfeldians, Social
Brethren, Spiritualists, Swedish Evangelical Miss. Covenant
(Waldenstromians), Unitarians, United Brethren (2 bodies), Universalists.
Total of sects and splits--139.
In the present month (February), Mr. E. I. Lindh, A.M., has
communicated to the Boston Transcript a hopeful article on the solution
of the problem of the "divided church." Divided is not too violent a
term. Subdivided could have been permitted if he had thought of it. He
came near thinking of it, for he mentions some of the subdivisions
himself: "the 12 kinds of Presbyterians, the 17 kinds of Methodists, the
13 kinds of Baptists, etc." He overlooked the 12 kinds of Mennonites and
the 22 kinds of Lutherans, but they are in Rev. Mr. Carroll's list.
Altogether, 76 splits under 5 flags. The Literary Digest (February 14th)
is pleased with Mr. Lindh's optimistic article, and also with the signs
of the times, and perceives that "the idea of Church unity is in the
air."
Now, then, is not Mrs. Eddy profoundly wise in forbidding, for all time,
all explanations of her religion except such as she shall let on to be
her own?
I think so. I think there can be no doubt of it. In a way, they will be
her own; for, no matter which member of her clerical staff shall furnish
the explanations, not a line of them will she ever allow to be printed
until she shall have approved it, accepted it, copyrighted it, cabbaged
it. We may depend on that with a four-ace confidence.
THE NEW INFALLIBILITY
All in proper time Mrs. Eddy's factory will take hold of that
Commandment, and explain it for good and all. It may be that one member
of the shift will vote that the word "all" means all; it may be that ten
members of the shift will vote that "all" means only a percentage; but it
is Mrs. Eddy, not the eleven, who will do the deciding. And if she says
it is percentage, then percentage it is, forevermore--and that is what I
am expecting, for she doesn't sell all herself, nor any considerable part
of it, and as regards the poor, she doesn't declare any dividend; but if
she says "all" means all, then all it is, to the end of time, and no
follower of hers will ever be allowed to reconstruct that text, or shrink
it, or inflate it, or meddle with it in any way at all. Even to-day
--right here in the beginning--she is the sole person who, in the matter
of Christian Science exegesis, is privileged to exploit the Spiral Twist.
The Christian world has two Infallibles now.
Of equal power? For the present only. When Leo XIII. passes to his
rest another Infallible will ascend his throne; others, and yet others,
and still others will follow him, and be as infallible as he, and decide
questions of doctrine as long as they may come up, all down the far
future; but Mary Baker G. Eddy is the only Infallible that will ever
occupy the Science throne. Many a Science Pope will succeed her, but she
has closed their mouths; they will repeat and reverently praise and adore
her infallibilities, but venture none themselves. In her grave she will
still outrank all other Popes, be they of what Church they may. She will
hold the supremest of earthly titles, The Infallible--with a capital T.
Many in the world's history have had a hunger for such nuggets and slices
of power as they might reasonably hope to grab out of an empire's or a
religion's assets, but Mrs. Eddy is the only person alive or dead who has
ever struck for the whole of them. For small things she has the eye of a
microscope, for large ones the eye of a telescope, and whatever she sees,
she wants. Wants it all.
THE SACRED POEMS
When Mrs. Eddy's "sacred revelations" (that is the language of the
By-laws) are read in public, their authorship must be named. The By-laws
twice command this, therefore we mention it twice, to be fair.
But it is also commanded that when a member publicly quotes "from the
poems of our Pastor Emeritus" the authorship shall be named. For these
are sacred, too. There are kindly people who may suspect a hidden
generosity in that By-law; they may think it is there to protect the
Official Reader from the suspicion of having written the poems himself.
Such do not know Mrs. Eddy. She does an inordinate deal of protecting,
but in no distinctly named and specified case in her history has Number
Two been the object of it. Instances have been claimed, but they have
failed of proof, and even of plausibility.
"Members shall also instruct their students" to look out and advertise
the authorship when they read those poems and things. Not on Mrs. Eddy's
account, but "for the good of our Cause."
THE CHURCH EDIFICE
1. Mrs. Eddy gave the land. It was not of much value at the time, but
it is very valuable now.
2. Her people built the Mother-Church edifice on it, at a cost of two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
3. Then they gave the whole property to her.
4. Then she gave it to the Board of Directors. She is the Board of
Directors. She took it out of one pocket and put it in the other.
5. Sec. 10 (of the deed). "Whenever said Directors shall determine
that it is inexpedient to maintain preaching, reading, or speaking in
said church in accordance with the terms of this deed, they are
authorized and required to reconvey forthwith said lot of land with the
building thereon to Mary Baker G. Eddy, her heirs and assigns forever,
by a proper deed of conveyance."
She is never careless, never slipshod, about a matter of business.
Owning the property through her Board of Waxworks was safe enough, still
it was sound business to set another grip on it to cover accidents, and
she did it. Her barkers (what a curious name; I wonder if it is
copyrighted); her barkers persistently advertise to the public her
generosity in giving away a piece of land which cost her a trifle, and a
two--hundred--and--fifty--thousand--dollar church which cost her nothing;
and they can hardly speak of the unselfishness of it without breaking
down and crying; yet they know she gave nothing away, and never intended
to. However, such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity
that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Some of the hostiles think that Mrs. Eddy's idea in protecting this
property in the interest of her heirs, and in accumulating a great money
fortune, is, that she may leave her natural heirs well provided for when
she goes. I think it is a mistake. I think she is of late years giving
herself large concern about only one interest-her power and glory, and
the perpetuation and worship of her Name--with a capital N. Her Church
is her pet heir, and I think it will get her wealth. It is the torch
which is to light the world and the ages with her glory.
I think she once prized money for the ease and comfort it could bring,
the showy vanities it could furnish, and the social promotion it could
command; for we have seen that she was born into the world with little
ways and instincts and aspirations and affectations that are duplicates
of our own. I do not think her money-passion has ever diminished in
ferocity, I do not think that she has ever allowed a dollar that had no
friends to get by her alive, but I think her reason for wanting it has
changed. I think she wants it now to increase and establish and
perpetuate her power and glory with, not to add to her comforts and
luxuries, not to furnish paint and fuss and feathers for vain display.
I think her ambitions have soared away above the fuss-and-feather stage.
She still likes the little shows and vanities--a fact which she exposed
in a public utterance two or three days ago when she was not noticing
--but I think she does not place a large value upon them now. She could
build a mighty and far-shining brass-mounted palace if she wanted to, but
she does not do it. She would have had that kind of an ambition in the
early scrabbling times. She could go to England to-day and be worshiped
by earls, and get a comet's attention from the million, if she cared for
such things. She would have gone in the early scrabbling days for much
less than an earl, and been vain of it, and glad to show off before the
remains of the Scotch kin. But those things are very small to her now
--next to invisible, observed through the cloud-rack from the dizzy
summit where she perches in these great days. She does not want that
church property for herself. It is worth but a quarter of a million--a
sum she could call in from her far-spread flocks to-morrow with a lift of
her hand. Not a squeeze of it, just a lift. It would come without a
murmur; come gratefully, come gladly. And if her glory stood in more
need of the money in Boston than it does where her flocks are propagating
it, she would lift the hand, I think.
She is still reaching for the Dollar, she will continue to reach for it;
but not that she may spend it upon herself; not that she may spend it
upon charities; not that she may indemnify an early deprivation and
clothe herself in a blaze of North Adams gauds; not that she may have
nine breeds of pie for breakfast, as only the rich New-Englander can; not
that she may indulge any petty material vanity or appetite that once was
hers and prized and nursed, but that she may apply that Dollar to
statelier uses, and place it where it may cast the metallic sheen of her
glory farthest across the receding expanses of the globe.
PRAYER
A brief and good one is furnished in the book of By-laws. The Scientist
is required to pray it every day.
THE LORD'S PRAYER-AMENDED
This is not in the By-laws, it is in the first chapter of Science and
Health, edition of 1902. I do not find it in the edition of 1884. It is
probable that it had not at that time been handed down. Science and
Health's (latest) rendering of its "spiritual sense" is as follows:
"Our Father-Mother God' all-harmonious, adorable One. Thy kingdom is
within us, Thou art ever-present. Enable us to know--as in heaven, so on
earth--God is supreme. Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished
affections. And infinite Love is reflected in love. And Love leadeth us
not into temptation, but delivereth from sin, disease, and death. For
God is now and forever all Life, Truth, and Love."
If I thought my opinion was desired and would be properly revered, I
should say that in my judgment that is as good a piece of carpentering as
any of those eleven Commandment--experts could do with the material after
all their practice. I notice only one doubtful place. "Lead us not into
temptation" seems to me to be a very definite request, and that the new
rendering turns the definite request into a definite assertion. I shall
be glad to have that turned back to the old way and the marks of the
Spiral Twist removed, or varnished over; then I shall be satisfied, and
will do the best I can with what is left. At the same time, I do feel
that the shrinkage in our spiritual assets is getting serious. First the
Commandments, now the Prayer. I never expected to see these steady old
reliable securities watered down to this. And this is not the whole of
it. Last summer the Presbyterians extended the Calling and Election
suffrage to nearly everybody entitled to salvation. They did not even
stop there, but let out all the unbaptized American infants we had been
accumulating for two hundred years and more. There are some that believe
they would have let the Scotch ones out, too, if they could have done it.
Everything is going to ruin; in no long time we shall have nothing left
but the love of God.
THE NEW UNPARDONABLE SIN
"Working Against the Cause. Sec. 2. If a member of this Church shall
work against the accomplishment of what the Discoverer and Founder of
Christian Science understands is advantageous to the individual, to this
Church, and to the Cause of Christian Science"--out he goes. Forever.
The member may think that what he is doing will advance the Cause, but he
is not invited to do any thinking. More than that, he is not permitted
to do any--as he will clearly gather from this By-law. When a person
joins Mrs. Eddy's Church he must leave his thinker at home. Leave it
permanently. To make sure that it will not go off some time or other
when he is not watching, it will be safest for him to spike it. If he
should forget himself and think just once, the By-law provides that he
shall be fired out-instantly-forever-no return.
"It shall be the duty of this Church immediately to call a meeting, and
drop forever the name of this member from its records."
My, but it breathes a towering indignation!
There are forgivable offenses, but this is not one of them; there are
admonitions, probations, suspensions, in several minor cases; mercy is
shown the derelict, in those cases he is gently used, and in time he can
get back into the fold--even when he has repeated his offence. But let
him think, just once, without getting his thinker set to Eddy time, and
that is enough; his head comes off. There is no second offence, and
there is no gate open to that lost sheep, ever again.
"This rule cannot be changed, amended, or annulled, except by unanimous
vote of all the First Members."
The same being Mrs. Eddy. It is naively sly and pretty to see her keep
putting forward First Members, and Boards of This and That, and other
broideries and ruffles of her raiment, as if they were independent
entities, instead of a part of her clothes, and could do things all by
themselves when she was outside of them.
Mrs. Eddy did not need to copyright the sentence just quoted, its English
would protect it. None but she would have shovelled that comically
superfluous "all" in there.
The former Unpardonable Sin has gone out of service. We may frame the
new Christian Science one thus:
"Whatsoever Member shall think, and without Our Mother's permission act
upon his think, the same shall be cut off from the Church forever."
It has been said that I make many mistakes about Christian Science
through being ignorant of the spiritual meanings of its terminology. I
believe it is true. I have been misled all this time by that word
Member, because there was no one to tell me that its spiritual meaning
was Slave.
AXE AND BLOCK
There is a By-law which forbids Members to practice hypnotism; the
penalty is excommunication.
1. If a member is found to be a mental practitioner--
2. Complaint is to be entered against him--
3. By the Pastor Emeritus, and by none else;
4. No member is allowed to make complaint to her in the matter;
5. Upon Mrs. Eddy's mere "complaint"--unbacked by evidence or proof, and
without giving the accused a chance to be heard--his name shall be
dropped from this Church.
Mrs. Eddy has only to say a member is guilty--that is all. That ends it.
It is not a case of he "may" be cut off from Christian Science salvation,
it is a case of he "shall" be. Her serfs must see to it, and not say a
word.
Does the other Pope possess this prodigious and irresponsible power?
Certainly not in our day.
Some may be curious to know how Mrs. Eddy finds out that a member is
practicing hypnotism, since no one is allowed to come before her throne
and accuse him. She has explained this in Christian Science History,
first and second editions, page 16:
"I possess a spiritual sense of what the malicious mental practitioner is
mentally arguing which cannot be deceived; I can discern in the human
mind thoughts, motives, and purposes, and neither mental arguments nor
psychic power can affect this spiritual insight."
A marvelous woman; with a hunger for power such as has never been seen in
the world before. No thing, little or big, that contains any seed or
suggestion of power escapes her avaricious eye; and when once she gets
that eye on it, her remorseless grip follows. There isn't a Christian
Scientist who isn't ecclesiastically as much her property as if she had
bought him and paid for him, and copyrighted him and got a charter. She
cannot be satisfied when she has handcuffed a member, and put a leg-chain
and ball on him and plugged his ears and removed his thinker, she goes on
wrapping needless chains round and round him, just as a spider would.
For she trusts no one, believes in no one's honesty, judges every one by
herself. Although we have seen that she has absolute and irresponsible
command over her spectral Boards and over every official and servant of
her Church, at home and abroad, over every minute detail of her Church's
government, present and future, and can purge her membership of guilty or
suspected persons by various plausible formalities and whenever she will,
she is still not content, but must set her queer mind to work and invent
a way by which she can take a member--any member--by neck and crop and
fling him out without anything resembling a formality at all.
She is sole accuser and sole witness, and her testimony is final and
carries uncompromising and irremediable doom with it.
The Sole-Witness Court! It should make the Council of Ten and the
Council of Three turn in their graves for shame, to see how little they
knew about satanic concentrations of irresponsible power. Here we have
one Accuser, one Witness, one Judge, one Headsman--and all four bunched
together in Mrs. Eddy, the Inspired of God, His Latest Thought to His
People, New Member of the Holy Family, the Equal of Jesus.
When a Member is not satisfactory to Mrs. Eddy, and yet is blameless in
his life and faultless in his membership and in his Christian Science
walk and conversation, shall he hold up his head and tilt his hat over
one ear and imagine himself safe because of these perfections? Why, in
that very moment Mrs. Eddy will cast that spiritual X-ray of hers through
his dungarees and say:
"I see his hypnotism working, among his insides--remove him to the
block!"
What shall it profit him to know it isn't so? Nothing. His testimony is
of no value. No one wants it, no one will ask for it. He is not present
to offer it (he does not know he has been accused), and if he were there
to offer it, it would not be listened to.
It was out of powers approaching Mrs. Eddy's--though not equalling them
--that the Inquisition and the devastations of the Interdict grew. She
will transmit hers. The man born two centuries from now will think he
has arrived in hell; and all in good time he will think he knows it.
Vast concentrations of irresponsible power have never in any age been
used mercifully, and there is nothing to suggest that the Christian
Science Papacy is going to spend money on novelties.
Several Christian Scientists have asked me to refrain from prophecy.
There is no prophecy in our day but history. But history is a
trustworthy prophet. History is always repeating itself, because
conditions are always repeating themselves. Out of duplicated conditions
history always gets a duplicate product.
READING LETTERS AT MEETINGS
I wonder if there is anything a Member can do that will not raise Mrs.
Eddy's jealousy? The By-laws seem to hunt him from pillar to post all
the time, and turn all his thoughts and acts and words into sins against
the meek and lowly new deity of his worship. Apparently her jealousy
never sleeps. Apparently any trifle can offend it, and but one penalty
appease it--excommunication. The By-laws might properly and reasonably
be entitled Laws for the Coddling and Comforting of Our Mother's Petty
Jealousies. The By-law named at the head of this paragraph reads its
transgressor out of the Church if he shall carry a letter from Mrs. Eddy
to the congregation and forget to read it or fail to read the whole of
it.
HONESTY REQUISITE
Dishonest members are to be admonished; if they continue in dishonest
practices, excommunication follows. Considering who it is that draughted
this law, there is a certain amount of humor in it.
FURTHER APPLICATIONS OF THE AXE
Here follow the titles of some more By-laws whose infringement is
punishable by excommunication:
Silence Enjoined.
Misteaching.
Departure from Tenets.
Violation of Christian Fellowship.
Moral Offences.
Illegal Adoption.
Broken By-laws.
Violation of By-laws. (What is the difference?)
Formulas Forbidden.
Official Advice. (Forbids Tom, Dick, and Harry's clack.)
Unworthy of Membership.
Final Excommunication.
Organizing Churches.
This looks as if Mrs. Eddy had devoted a large share of her time and
talent to inventing ways to get rid of her Church members. Yet in
another place she seems to invite membership. Not in any urgent way, it
is true, still she throws out a bait to such as like notice and
distinction (in other words, the Human Race). Page 82:
"It is important that these seemingly strict conditions be complied with,
as the names of the Members of the Mother-Church will be recorded in the
history of the Church and become a part thereof."
We all want to be historical.
MORE SELF-PROTECTIONS
The Hymnal. There is a Christian Science Hymnal. Entrance to it was
closed in 1898. Christian Science students who make hymns nowadays may
possibly get them sung in the Mother-Church, "but not unless approved by
the Pastor Emeritus." Art. XXVII, Sec. 2.
Solo Singers. Mrs. Eddy has contributed the words of three of the hymns
in the Hymnal. Two of them appear in it six times altogether, each of
them being set to three original forms of musical anguish. Mrs. Eddy,
always thoughtful, has promulgated a By-law requiring the singing of one
of her three hymns in the Mother Church "as often as once each month."
It is a good idea. A congregation could get tired of even Mrs. Eddy's
muse in the course of time, without the cordializing incentive of
compulsion. We all know how wearisome the sweetest and touchingest
things can become, through rep-rep-repetition, and still
rep-rep-repetition, and more rep-rep-repetition-like "the sweet
by-and-by, in the sweet by-and-by," for instance, and "Tah-rah-rah
boom-de-aye"; and surely it is not likely that Mrs. Eddy's machine has
turned out goods that could outwear those great heart-stirrers, without
the assistance of the lash. "O'er Waiting Harpstrings of the Mind" is
pretty good, quite fair to middling--the whole seven of the stanzas--but
repetition would be certain to take the excitement out of it in the
course of time, even if there were fourteen, and then it would sound like
the multiplication table, and would cease to save. The congregation
would be perfectly sure to get tired; in fact, did get tired--hence the
compulsory By-law. It is a measure born of experience, not foresight.
The By-laws say that "if a solo singer shall neglect or refuse to sing
alone" one of those three hymns as often as once a month, and oftener if
so directed by the Board of Directors--which is Mrs. Eddy--the singer's
salary shall be stopped. It is circumstantial evidence that some
soloists neglected this sacrament and others refused it. At least that
is the charitable view to take of it. There is only one other view to
take: that Mrs. Eddy did really foresee that there would be singers who
would some day get tired of doing her hymns and proclaiming the
authorship, unless persuaded by a Bylaw, with a penalty attached. The
idea could of course occur to her wise head, for she would know that a
seven-stanza break might well be a calamitous strain upon a soloist, and
that he might therefore avoid it if unwatched. He could not curtail it,
for the whole of anything that Mrs. Eddy does is sacred, and cannot be
cut.
BOARD OF EDUCATION
It consists of four members, one of whom is President of it. Its members
are elected annually. Subject to Mrs. Eddy's approval. Art. XXX., Sec. 2.
She owns the Board--is the Board.
Mrs. Eddy is President of the Metaphysical College. If at any time she
shall vacate that office, the Directors of the College (that is to say,
Mrs. Eddy) "shall" elect to the vacancy the President of the Board of
Education (which is merely re-electing herself).
It is another case of "Pastor Emeritus." She gives up the shadow of
authority, but keeps a good firm hold on the substance.
PUBLIC TEACHERS
Applicants for admission to this industry must pass a thorough three
days' examination before the Board of Education "in Science and Health,
chapter on 'Recapitulation'; the Platform of Christian Science; page 403
of Christian Science Practice, from line second to the second paragraph
of page 405; and page 488, second and third paragraphs."
BOARD OF LECTURESHIP
The lecturers are exceedingly important servants of Mrs. Eddy, and she
chooses them with great care. Each of them has an appointed territory in
which to perform his duties--in the North, the South, the East, the West,
in Canada, in Great Britain, and so on--and each must stick to his own
territory and not forage beyond its boundaries. I think it goes without
saying--from what we have seen of Mrs. Eddy--that no lecture is delivered
until she has examined and approved it, and that the lecturer is not
allowed to change it afterwards.
The members of the Board of Lectureship are elected annually--
"Subject to the approval of Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy."
MISSIONARIES
There are but four. They are elected--like the rest of the domestics
--annually. So far as I can discover, not a single servant of the Sacred
Household has a steady job except Mrs. Eddy. It is plain that she trusts
no human being but herself.
THE BY-LAWS
The branch Churches are strictly forbidden to use them.
So far as I can see, they could not do it if they wanted to. The By-laws
are merely the voice of the master issuing commands to the servants.
There is nothing and nobody for the servants to re-utter them to.
That useless edict is repeated in the little book, a few pages farther
on. There are several other repetitions of prohibitions in the book that
could be spared-they only take up room for nothing.
THE CREED
It is copyrighted. I do not know why, but I suppose it is to keep
adventurers from some day claiming that they invented it, and not Mrs.
Eddy and that "strange Providence" that has suggested so many clever
things to her.
No Change. It is forbidden to change the Creed. That is important, at
any rate.
COPYRIGHT
I can understand why Mrs. Eddy copyrighted the early editions and
revisions of Science and Health, and why she had a mania for copyrighting
every scrap of every sort that came from her pen in those jejune days
when to be in print probably seemed a wonderful distinction to her in her
provincial obscurity, but why she should continue this delirium in these
days of her godship and her far-spread fame, I cannot explain to myself.
And particularly as regards Science and Health. She knows, now, that
that Annex is going to live for many centuries; and so, what good is a
fleeting forty-two-year copyright going to do it?
Now a perpetual copyright would be quite another matter. I would like to
give her a hint. Let her strike for a perpetual copyright on that book.
There is precedent for it. There is one book in the world which bears
the charmed life of perpetual copyright (a fact not known to twenty
people in the world). By a hardy perversion of privilege on the part of
the lawmaking power the Bible has perpetual copyright in Great Britain.
There is no justification for it in fairness, and no explanation of it
except that the Church is strong enough there to have its way, right or
wrong. The recent Revised Version enjoys perpetual copyright, too--a
stronger precedent, even, than the other one.
Now, then, what is the Annex but a Revised Version itself? Which of
course it is--Lord's Prayer and all. With that pair of formidable
British precedents to proceed upon, what Congress of ours--
But how short-sighted I am. Mrs. Eddy has thought of it long ago. She
thinks of everything. She knows she has only to keep her copyright of
1902 alive through its first stage of twenty-eight years, and perpetuity
is assured. A Christian Science Congress will reign in the Capitol then.
She probably attaches small value to the first edition (1875). Although
it was a Revelation from on high, it was slim, lank, incomplete, padded
with bales of refuse rags, and puffs from lassoed celebrities to fill it
out, an uncreditable book, a book easily sparable, a book not to be
mentioned in the same year with the sleek, fat, concise, compact,
compressed, and competent Annex of to-day, in its dainty flexible covers,
gilt--edges, rounded corners, twin screw, spiral twist, compensation
balance, Testament-counterfeit, and all that; a book just born to curl up
on the hymn-book-shelf in church and look just too sweet and holy for
anything. Yes, I see now what she was copyrighting that child for.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
It is true in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. She
thought of an organ, to disseminate the Truth as it was in Mrs. Eddy.
Straightway she started one--the Christian Science Journal.
It is true--in matters of business Mrs. Eddy thinks of everything. As
soon as she had got the Christian Science Journal sufficiently in debt to
make its presence on the premises disagreeable to her, it occurred to her
to make somebody a present of it. Which she did, along with its debts.
It was in the summer of 1889. The victim selected was her Church
--called, in those days, The National Christian Scientist Association.
She delivered this sorrow to those lambs as a "gift" in consideration of
their "loyalty to our great cause."
Also--still thinking of everything--she told them to retain Mr. Bailey in
the editorship and make Mr. Nixon publisher. We do not know what it was
she had against those men; neither do we know whether she scored on
Bailey or not, we only know that God protected Nixon, and for that I am
sincerely glad, although I do not know Nixon and have never even seen
him.
Nixon took the Journal and the rest of the Publishing Society's
liabilities, and demonstrated over them during three years, then brought
in his report:
"On assuming my duties as publisher, there was not a dollar in the
treasury; but on the contrary the Society owed unpaid printing and paper
bills to the amount of several hundred dollars, not to mention a
contingent liability of many more hundreds"--represented by advance
--subscriptions paid for the Journal and the "Series," the which goods
Mrs. Eddy had not delivered. And couldn't, very well, perhaps, on a
Metaphysical College income of but a few thousand dollars a day, or a
week, or whatever it was in those magnificently flourishing times. The
struggling Journal had swallowed up those advance-payments, but its
"claim" was a severe one and they had failed to cure it. But Nixon cured
it in his diligent three years, and joyously reported the news that he
had cleared off all the debts and now had a fat six thousand dollars in
the bank.
It made Mrs. Eddy's mouth water.
At the time that Mrs. Eddy had unloaded that dismal gift on to her
National Association, she had followed her inveterate custom: she had
tied a string to its hind leg, and kept one end of it hitched to her
belt. We have seen her do that in the case of the Boston Mosque. When
she deeds property, she puts in that string-clause. It provides that
under certain conditions she can pull the string and land the property in
the cherished home of its happy youth. In the present case she believed
that she had made provision that if at any time the National Christian
Science Association should dissolve itself by a formal vote, she could
pull.
A year after Nixon's handsome report, she writes the Association that she
has a "unique request to lay before it." It has dissolved, and she is
not quite sure that the Christian Science Journal has "already fallen
into her hands" by that act, though it "seems" to her to have met with
that accident; so she would like to have the matter decided by a formal
vote. But whether there is a doubt or not, "I see the wisdom," she says,
"of again owning this Christian Science waif."
I think that that is unassailable evidence that the waif was making
money, hands down.
She pulled her gift in. A few years later she donated the Publishing
Society, along with its real estate, its buildings, its plant, its
publications, and its money--the whole worth twenty--two thousand
dollars, and free of debt--to--Well, to the Mother-Church!
That is to say, to herself. There is an act count of it in the Christian
Science Journal, and of how she had already made some other handsome
gifts--to her Church--and others to--to her Cause besides "an almost
countless number of private charities" of cloudy amount and otherwise
indefinite. This landslide of generosities overwhelmed one of her
literary domestics. While he was in that condition he tried to express
what he felt:
"Let us endeavor to lift up our hearts in thankfulness to . . . our
Mother in Israel for these evidences of generosity and self-sacrifice
that appeal to our deepest sense of gratitude, even while surpassing our
comprehension."
A year or two later, Mrs. Eddy promulgated some By-laws of a
self-sacrificing sort which assuaged him, perhaps, and perhaps enabled
his surpassed comprehension to make a sprint and catch up. These are to
be found in Art. XII., entitled.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING SOCIETY
This Article puts the whole publishing business into the hands of a
publishing Board--special. Mrs. Eddy appoints to its vacancies.
The profits go semi-annually to the Treasurer of the Mother-Church. Mrs.
Eddy owns the Treasurer.
Editors and publishers of the Christian Science Journal cannot be elected
or removed without Mrs. Eddy's knowledge and consent.
Every candidate for employment in a high capacity or a low one, on the
other periodicals or in the publishing house, must first be "accepted by
Mrs. Eddy as suitable." And "by the Board of Directors"--which is
surplusage, since Mrs. Eddy owns the Board.
If at any time a weekly shall be started, "it shall be owned by The First
Church of Christ, Scientist"--which is Mrs. Eddy.
CHAPTER VIII
I think that any one who will carefully examine the By-laws (I have
placed all of the important ones before the reader), will arrive at the
conclusion that of late years the master-passion in Mrs. Eddy's heart is
a hunger for power and glory; and that while her hunger for money still
remains, she wants it now for the expansion and extension it can furnish
to that power and glory, rather than what it can do for her towards
satisfying minor and meaner ambitions.
I wish to enlarge a little upon this matter. I think it is quite clear
that the reason why Mrs. Eddy has concentrated in herself all powers, all
distinctions, all revenues that are within the command of the Christian
Science Church Universal is that she desires and intends to devote them
to the purpose just suggested--the upbuilding of her personal glory
--hers, and no one else's; that, and the continuing of her name's glory
after she shall have passed away. If she has overlooked a single power,
howsoever minute, I cannot discover it. If she has found one, large or
small, which she has not seized and made her own, there is no record of
it, no trace of it. In her foragings and depredations she usually puts
forward the Mother-Church--a lay figure--and hides behind it. Whereas,
she is in manifest reality the Mother-Church herself. It has an
impressive array of officials, and committees, and Boards of Direction,
of Education, of Lectureship, and so on--geldings, every one, shadows,
spectres, apparitions, wax-figures: she is supreme over them all, she can
abolish them when she will; blow them out as she would a candle. She is
herself the Mother-Church. Now there is one By-law which says that the
Mother-Church:
"shall be officially controlled by no other church."
That does not surprise us--we know by the rest of the By-laws that that
is a quite irrelevant remark. Yet we do vaguely and hazily wonder why
she takes the trouble to say it; why she wastes the words; what her
object can be--seeing that that emergency has been in so many, many ways,
and so effectively and drastically barred off and made impossible. Then
presently the object begins to dawn upon us. That is, it does after we
have read the rest of the By-law three or four times, wondering and
admiring to see Mrs. Eddy--Mrs. Eddy--Mrs. Eddy, of all persons--throwing
away power!--making a fair exchange--doing a fair thing for once more,
an almost generous thing! Then we look it through yet once more
unsatisfied, a little suspicious--and find that it is nothing but a sly,
thin make-believe, and that even the very title of it is a sarcasm and
embodies a falsehood--"self" government:
"Local Self-Government. The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in
Boston, Massachusetts, shall assume no official control of other churches
of this denomination. It shall be officially controlled by no other
church."
It has a most pious and deceptive give-and-take air of perfect fairness,
unselfishness, magnanimity--almost godliness, indeed. But it is all art.
In the By-laws, Mrs. Eddy, speaking by the mouth of her other self, the
Mother-Church, proclaims that she will assume no official control of
other churches-branch churches. We examine the other By-laws, and they
answer some important questions for us:
1. What is a branch Church? It is a body of Christian Scientists,
organized in the one and only permissible way--by a member, in good
standing, of the Mother-Church, and who is also a pupil of one of Mrs.
Eddy's accredited students. That is to say, one of her properties. No
other can do it. There are other indispensable requisites; what are
they?
2. The new Church cannot enter upon its functions until its members have
individually signed, and pledged allegiance to, a Creed furnished by Mrs.
Eddy.
3. They are obliged to study her books, and order their lives by them.
And they must read no outside religious works.
4. They must sing the hymns and pray the prayers provided by her, and
use no others in the services, except by her permission.
5. They cannot have preachers and pastors. Her law.
6. In their Church they must have two Readers--a man and a woman.
7. They must read the services framed and appointed by her.
8. She--not the branch Church--appoints those Readers.
9. She--not the branch Church--dismisses them and fills the vacancies.
10. She can do this without consulting the branch Church, and without
explaining.
11. The branch Church can have a religious lecture from time to time.
By applying to Mrs. Eddy. There is no other way.
12. But the branch Church cannot select the lecturer. Mrs. Eddy does
it.
13. The branch Church pays his fee.
14. The harnessing of all Christian Science wedding-teams, members of
the branch Church, must be done by duly authorized and consecrated
Christian Science functionaries. Her factory is the only one that makes
and licenses them.
[15. Nothing is said about christenings. It is inferable from this that
a Christian Science child is born a Christian Scientist and requires no
tinkering.]
[16. Nothing is said about funerals. It is inferable, then, that a
branch Church is privileged to do in that matter as it may choose.]
To sum up. Are any important Church-functions absent from the list? I
cannot call any to mind. Are there any lacking ones whose exercise could
make the branch in any noticeable way independent of the Mother. Church?
--even in any trifling degree? I think of none. If the named functions
were abolished would there still be a Church left? Would there be even a
shadow of a Church left? Would there be anything at all left? even the
bare name?
Manifestly not. There isn't a single vital and essential Church-function
of any kind, that is not named in the list. And over every one of them
the Mother-Church has permanent and unchallengeable control, upon every
one of them Mrs. Eddy has set her irremovable grip. She holds, in
perpetuity, autocratic and indisputable sovereignty and control over
every branch Church in the earth; and yet says, in that sugary, naive,
angel-beguiling way of hers, that the Mother-Church:
"shall assume no official control of other churches of this
denomination."
Whereas in truth the unmeddled-with liberties of a branch Christian
Science Church are but very, very few in number, and are these:
1. It can appoint its own furnace-stoker, winters.
2. It can appoint its own fan-distributors, summers.
3. It can, in accordance with its own choice in the matter, burn, bury,
or preserve members who are pretending to be dead--whereas there is no
such thing as death.
4. It can take up a collection.
The branch Churches have no important liberties, none that give them an
important voice in their own affairs. Those are all locked up, and Mrs.
Eddy has the key. "Local Self-Government" is a large name and sounds
well; but the branch Churches have no more of it than have the privates
in the King of Dahomey's army.
"MOTHER-CHURCH UNIQUE"
Mrs. Eddy, with an envious and admiring eye upon the solitary and
rivalless and world-shadowing majesty of St. Peter's, reveals in her
By-laws her purpose to set the Mother-Church apart by itself in a stately
seclusion and make it duplicate that lone sublimity under the Western
sky. The By-law headed "Mother-Church Unique" says--
"In its relation to other Christian Science churches, the Mother-Church
stands alone.
"It occupies a position that no other Church can fill.
"Then for a branch Church to assume such position would be disastrous to
Christian Science,
"Therefore--"
Therefore no branch Church is allowed to have branches. There shall be
no Christian Science St. Peter's in the earth but just one--the
Mother-Church in Boston.
"NO FIRST MEMBERS"
But for the thoughtful By-law thus entitled, every Science branch in the
earth would imitate the Mother-Church and set up an aristocracy. Every
little group of ground-floor Smiths and Furgusons and Shadwells and
Simpsons that organized a branch would assume that great title, of "First
Members," along with its vast privileges of "discussing" the weather and
casting blank ballots, and soon there would be such a locust-plague of
them burdening the globe that the title would lose its value and have to
be abolished.
But where business and glory are concerned, Mrs. Eddy thinks of
everything, and so she did not fail to take care of her Aborigines, her
stately and exclusive One Hundred, her college of functionless cardinals,
her Sanhedrin of Privileged Talkers (Limited). After taking away all the
liberties of the branch Churches, and in the same breath disclaiming all
official control over their affairs, she smites them on the mouth with
this--the very mouth that was watering for those nobby ground-floor
honors--
"No First Members. Branch Churches shall not organize with First
Members, that special method of organization being adapted to the
Mother-Church alone."
And so, first members being prohibited, we pierce through the cloud of
Mrs. Eddy's English and perceive that they must then necessarily organize
with Subsequent Members. There is no other way. It will occur to them
by-and-by to found an aristocracy of Early Subsequent Members. There is
no By-law against it.
"THE"
I uncover to that imperial word. And to the mind, too, that conceived
the idea of seizing and monopolizing it as a title. I believe it is Mrs.
Eddy's dazzlingest invention. For show, and style, and grandeur, and
thunder and lightning and fireworks it outclasses all the previous
inventions of man, and raises the limit on the Pope. He can never put
his avid hand on that word of words--it is pre-empted. And copyrighted,
of course. It lifts the Mother-Church away up in the sky, and
fellowships it with the rare and select and exclusive little company of
the THE's of deathless glory--persons and things whereof history and the
ages could furnish only single examples, not two: the Saviour, the
Virgin, the Milky Way, the Bible, the Earth, the Equator, the Devil, the
Missing Link--and now The First Church, Scientist. And by clamor of
edict and By-law Mrs. Eddy gives personal notice to all branch Scientist
Churches on this planet to leave that THE alone.
She has demonstrated over it and made it sacred to the Mother-Church:
"The article 'The' must not be used before the titles of branch
Churches--
"Nor written on applications for membership in naming such churches."
Those are the terms. There can and will be a million First Churches of
Christ, Scientist, scattered over the world, in a million towns and
villages and hamlets and cities, and each may call itself (suppressing
the article), "First Church of Christ. Scientist"--it is permissible,
and no harm; but there is only one The Church of Christ, Scientist, and
there will never be another. And whether that great word fall in the
middle of a sentence or at the beginning of it, it must always have its
capital T.
I do not suppose that a juvenile passion for fussy little worldly shows
and vanities can furnish a match to this, anywhere in the history of the
nursery. Mrs. Eddy does seem to be a shade fonder of little special
distinctions and pomps than is usual with human beings.
She instituted that immodest "The" with her own hand; she did not wait
for somebody else to think of it.
A LIFE-TERM MONOPOLY
There is but one human Pastor in the whole Christian Science world; she
reserves that exalted place to herself.
A PERPETUAL ONE
There is but one other object in the whole Christian Science world
honored with that title and holding that office: it is her book, the
Annex--permanent Pastor of The First Church, and of all branch Churches.
With her own hand she draughted the By-laws which make her the only
really absolute sovereign that lives to-day in Christendom.
She does not allow any objectionable pictures to be exhibited in the room
where her book is sold, nor any indulgence in idle gossip there; and from
the general look of that By-law I judge that a lightsome and improper
person can be as uncomfortable in that place as he could be in heaven.
THE SANCTUM SANCTORUM AND SACRED CHAIR
In a room in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, there is a museum of
objects which have attained to holiness through contact with Mrs. Eddy
--among them an electrically lighted oil-picture of a chair which she
used to sit in--and disciples from all about the world go softly in
there, in restricted groups, under proper guard, and reverently gaze upon
those relics. It is worship. Mrs. Eddy could stop it if she was not
fond of it, for her sovereignty over that temple is supreme.
The fitting-up of that place as a shrine is not an accident, nor a
casual, unweighed idea; it is imitated from age--old religious custom.
In Treves the pilgrim reverently gazes upon the Seamless Robe, and humbly
worships; and does the same in that other continental church where they
keep a duplicate; and does likewise in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
in Jerusalem, where memorials of the Crucifixion are preserved; and now,
by good fortune we have our Holy Chair and things, and a market for our
adorations nearer home.
But is there not a detail that is new, fresh, original? Yes, whatever
old thing Mrs. Eddy touches gets something new by the contact--something
not thought of before by any one--something original, all her own, and
copyrightable. The new feature is self worship--exhibited in permitting
this shrine to be installed during her lifetime, and winking her sacred
eye at it.
A prominent Christian Scientist has assured me that the Scientists do not
worship Mrs. Eddy, and I think it likely that there may be five or six of
the cult in the world who do not worship her, but she herself is
certainly not of that company. Any healthy-minded person who will
examine Mrs. Eddy's little Autobiography and the Manual of By-laws
written by her will be convinced that she worships herself; and that she
brings to this service a fervor of devotion surpassing even that which
she formerly laid at the feet of the Dollar, and equalling any which
rises to the Throne of Grace from any quarter.
I think this is as good a place as any to salve a hurt which I was the
means of inflicting upon a Christian Scientist lately. The first third
of this book was written in 1899 in Vienna. Until last summer I had
supposed that that third had been printed in a book which I published
about a year later--a hap which had not happened. I then sent the
chapters composing it to the North American Review, but failed in one
instance, to date them. And so, in an undated chapter I said a lady told
me "last night" so and so. There was nothing to indicate to the reader
that that "last night" was several years old, therefore the phrase seemed
to refer to a night of very recent date. What the lady had told me was,
that in a part of the Mother-Church in Boston she had seen Scientists
worshipping a portrait of Mrs. Eddy before which a light was kept
constantly burning.
A Scientist came to me and wished me to retract that "untruth." He said
there was no such portrait, and that if I wanted to be sure of it I could
go to Boston and see for myself. I explained that my "last night" meant
a good while ago; that I did not doubt his assertion that there was no
such portrait there now, but that I should continue to believe it had
been there at the time of the lady's visit until she should retract her
statement herself. I was at no time vouching for the truth of the
remark, nevertheless I considered it worth par.
And yet I am sorry the lady told me, since a wound which brings me no
happiness has resulted. I am most willing to apply such salve as I can.
The best way to set the matter right and make everything pleasant and
agreeable all around will be to print in this place a description of the
shrine as it appeared to a recent visitor, Mr. Frederick W. Peabody, of
Boston. I will copy his newspaper account, and the reader will see that
Mrs. Eddy's portrait is not there now:
"We lately stood on the threshold of the Holy of Holies of the
Mother-Church, and with a crowd of worshippers patiently waited for
admittance to the hallowed precincts of the 'Mother's Room.' Over the
doorway was a sign informing us that but four persons at a time would be
admitted; that they would be permitted to remain but five minutes only,
and would please retire from the 'Mother's Room' at the ringing of the
bell. Entering with three of the faithful, we looked with profane eyes
upon the consecrated furnishings. A show-woman in attendance
monotonously announced the character of the different appointments.
Set in a recess of the wall and illumined with electric light was an
oil-painting the show-woman seriously declared to be a lifelike and
realistic picture of the Chair in which the Mother sat when she composed
her 'inspired' work. It was a picture of an old-fashioned? country, hair
cloth rocking-chair, and an exceedingly commonplace-looking table with a
pile of manuscript, an ink-bottle, and pen conspicuously upon it. On the
floor were sheets of manuscript. 'The mantel-piece is of pure onyx,'
continued the show-woman, 'and the beehive upon the window-sill is made
from one solid block of onyx; the rug is made of a hundred breasts of
eider-down ducks, and the toilet-room you see in the corner is of the
latest design, with gold-plated drain-pipes; the painted windows are from
the Mother's poem, "Christ and Christmas," and that case contains
complete copies of all the Mother's books.' The chairs upon which the
sacred person of the Mother had reposed were protected from sacrilegious
touch by a broad band of satin ribbon. My companions expressed their
admiration in subdued and reverent tones, and at the tinkling of the bell
we reverently tiptoed out of the room to admit another delegation of the
patient waiters at the door."
Now, then, I hope the wound is healed. I am willing to relinquish the
portrait, and compromise on the Chair. At the same time, if I were going
to worship either, I should not choose the Chair.
As a picturesquely and persistently interesting personage, there is no
mate to Mrs. Eddy, the accepted Equal of the Saviour. But some of her
tastes are so different from His! I find it quite impossible to imagine
Him, in life, standing sponsor for that museum there, and taking pleasure
in its sumptuous shows. I believe He would put that Chair in the fire,
and the bell along with it; and I think He would make the show-woman go
away. I think He would break those electric bulbs, and the "mantel-piece
of pure onyx," and say reproachful things about the golden drain-pipes of
the lavatory, and give the costly rug of duck-breasts to the poor, and
sever the satin ribbon and invite the weary to rest and ease their aches
in the consecrated chairs. What He would do with the painted windows we
can better conjecture when we come presently to examine their
peculiarities.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PASTOR-UNIVERSAL
When Mrs. Eddy turned the pastors out of all the Christian Science
churches and abolished the office for all time as far as human occupancy
is concerned--she appointed the Holy Ghost to fill their place. If this
language be blasphemous, I did not invent the blasphemy, I am merely
stating a fact. I will quote from page 227 of Science and Health
(edition 1899), as a first step towards an explanation of this startling
matter--a passage which sets forth and classifies the Christian Science
Trinity:
"Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune God, or triply divine
Principle. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one--the same in
essence, though multiform in office: God the Father; Christ the type of
Sonship; Divine Science, or the Holy Comforter. . . .
"The Holy Ghost, or Spirit, reveals this triune Principle, and (the Holy
Ghost) is expressed in Divine Science, which is the Comforter, leading
into all Truth, and revealing the divine Principle of the universe
--universal and perpetual harmony."
I will cite another passage. Speaking of Jesus--
"His students then received the Holy Ghost. By this is meant, that by
all they had witnessed and suffered they were roused to an enlarged
understanding of Divine Science, even to the spiritual interpretation . .
. . . of His teachings," etc.
Also, page 579, in the chapter called the Glossary:
"HOLY GHOST. Divine Science; the developments of Life, Truth, and Love."
The Holy Ghost reveals the massed spirit of the fused trinity; this
massed spirit is expressed in Divine Science, and is the Comforter;
Divine Science conveys to men the "spiritual interpretation" of the
Saviour's teachings. That seems to be the meaning of the quoted
passages.
Divine Science is Christian Science; the book "Science and Health" is a
"revelation" of the whole spirit of the Trinity, and is therefore "The
Holy Ghost"; it conveys to men the "spiritual interpretation" of the
Bible's teachings and therefore is "the Comforter."
I do not find this analyzing work easy, I would rather saw wood; and a
person can never tell whether he has added up a Science and Health sum
right or not, anyway, after all his trouble. Neither can he easily find
out whether the texts are still on the market or have been discarded from
the Book; for two hundred and fifty-eight editions of it have been
issued, and no two editions seem to be alike. The annual changes--in
technical terminology; in matter and wording; in transpositions of
chapters and verses; in leaving out old chapters and verses and putting
in new ones--seem to be next to innumerable, and as there is no index,
there is no way to find a thing one wants without reading the book
through. If ever I inspire a Bible-Annex I will not rush at it in a
half-digested, helter-skelter way and have to put in thirty-eight years
trying to get some of it the way I want it, I will sit down and think it
out and know what it is I want to say before I begin. An inspirer cannot
inspire for Mrs. Eddy and keep his reputation. I have never seen such
slipshod work, bar the ten that interpreted for the home market the "sell
all thou hast." I have quoted one "spiritual" rendering of the Lord's
Prayer, I have seen one other one, and am told there are five more. Yet
the inspirer of Mrs. Eddy the new Infallible casts a complacent critical
stone at the other Infallible for being unable to make up its mind about
such things. Science and Health, edition 1899, page 33:
"The decisions, by vote of Church Councils, as to what should and should
not be considered Holy Writ, the manifest mistakes in the ancient
versions: the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament and
the three hundred thousand in the New--these facts show how a mortal and
material sense stole into the divine record, darkening, to some extent,
the inspired pages with its own hue."
To some extent, yes--speaking cautiously. But it is nothing, really
nothing; Mrs. Eddy is only a little way behind, and if her inspirer lives
to get her Annex to suit him that Catholic record will have to "go 'way
back and set down," as the ballad says. Listen to the boastful song of
Mrs. Eddy's organ, the Christian Science Journal for March, 1902, about
that year's revamping and half-soling of Science and Health, whose
official name is the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and who is now the
Official Pastor and Infallible and Unerring Guide of every Christian
Science church in the two hemispheres, hear Simple Simon that met the
pieman brag of the Infallible's fallibility:
"Throughout the entire book the verbal changes are so numerous as to
indicate the vast amount of time and labor Mrs. Eddy has devoted to this
revision. The time and labor thus bestowed is relatively as great as
that of--the committee who revised the Bible.... Thus we have
additional evidence of the herculean efforts our beloved Leader has made
and is constantly making for the promulgation of Truth and the
furtherance of her divinely bestowed mission," etc.
It is a steady job. I could help inspire if desired; I am not doing much
now, and would work for half-price, and should not object to the country.
PRICE OF THE PASTOR-UNIVERSAL
The price of the Pastor-Universal, Science and Health, called in Science
literature the Comforter--and by that other sacred Name--is three
dollars in cloth, as heretofore, six when it is finely bound, and shaped
to imitate the Testament, and is broken into verses. Margin of profit
above cost of manufacture, from five hundred to seven hundred per cent.,
as already noted In the profane subscription-trade, it costs the
publisher heavily to canvass a three-dollar book; he must pay the general
agent sixty per cent. commission--that is to say, one dollar and
eighty-cents. Mrs. Eddy escapes this blistering tax, because she owns
the Christian Science canvasser, and can compel him to work for nothing.
Read the following command--not request--fulminated by Mrs. Eddy, over
her signature, in the Christian Science Journal for March, 1897, and
quoted by Mr. Peabody in his book. The book referred to is Science and
Health:
"It shall be the duty of all Christian Scientists to circulate and to
sell as many of these books as they can."
That is flung at all the elect, everywhere that the sun shines, but no
penalty is shaken over their heads to scare them. The same command was
issued to the members (numbering to-day twenty-five thousand) of The
Mother-Church, also, but with it went a threat, of the infliction, in
case of disobedience, of the most dreaded punishment that has a place in
the Church's list of penalties for transgressions of Mrs. Eddy's edicts
--excommunication:
"If a member of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, shall fail to obey
this injunction, it will render him liable to lose his membership in this
Church. MARY BAKER EDDY."
It is the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition.
None but accepted and well established gods can venture an affront like
that and do it with confidence. But the human race will take anything
from that class. Mrs. Eddy knows the human race; knows it better than
any mere human being has known it in a thousand centuries. My confidence
in her human-beingship is getting shaken, my confidence in her godship is
stiffening.
SEVEN HUNDRED PER CENT.
A Scientist out West has visited a bookseller--with intent to find fault
with me--and has brought away the information that the price at which
Mrs. Eddy sells Science and Health is not an unusually high one for the
size and make of the book. That is true. But in the book-trade--that
profit-devourer unknown to Mrs. Eddy's book--a three-dollar book that is
made for thirty-five or forty cents in large editions is put at three
dollars because the publisher has to pay author, middleman, and
advertising, and if the price were much below three the profit accruing
would not pay him fairly for his time and labor. At the same time, if he
could get ten dollars for the book he would take it, and his morals would
not fall under criticism.
But if he were an inspired person commissioned by the Deity to receive
and print and spread broadcast among sorrowing and suffering and poor men
a precious message of healing and cheer and salvation, he would have to
do as Bible Societies do--sell the book at a pinched margin above cost to
such as could pay, and give it free to all that couldn't; and his name
would be praised. But if he sold it at seven hundred per cent. profit
and put the money in his pocket, his name would be mocked and derided.
Just as Mrs. Eddy's is. And most justifiably, as it seems to me.
The complete Bible contains one million words. The New Testament by
itself contains two hundred and forty thousand words.
My '84 edition of Science and Health contains one hundred and twenty
thousand words--just half as many as the New Testament.
Science and Health has since been so inflated by later inspirations that
the 1902 edition contains one hundred and eighty thousand words--not
counting the thirty thousand at the back, devoted by Mrs. Eddy to
advertising the book's healing abilities--and the inspiring continues
right along.
If you have a book whose market is so sure and so great that you can give
a printer an everlasting order for thirty or forty or fifty thousand
copies a year he will furnish them at a cheap rate, because whenever
there is a slack time in his press-room and bindery he can fill the idle
intervals on your book and be making something instead of losing. That
is the kind of contract that can be let on Science and Health every year.
I am obliged to doubt that the three-dollar Science and Health costs Mrs.
Eddy above fifteen cents, or that the six dollar copy costs her above
eighty cents. I feel quite sure that the average profit to her on these
books, above cost of manufacture, is all of seven hundred per cent.
Every proper Christian Scientist has to buy and own (and canvass for)
Science and Health (one hundred and eighty thousand words), and he must
also own a Bible (one million words). He can buy the one for from three
to six dollars, and the other for fifteen cents. Or, if three dollars is
all the money he has, he can get his Bible for nothing. When the Supreme
Being disseminates a saving Message through uninspired agents--the New
Testament, for instance--it can be done for five cents a copy, but when
He sends one containing only two-thirds as many words through the shop of
a Divine Personage, it costs sixty times as much. I think that in
matters of such importance it is bad economy to employ a wild-cat agency.
Here are some figures which are perfectly authentic, and which seem to
justify my opinion.
"These [Bible] societies, inspired only by a sense of religious duty, are
issuing the Bible at a price so small that they have made it the cheapest
book printed. For example, the American Bible Society offers an edition
of the whole Bible as low as fifteen cents and the New Testament at five
cents, and the British Society at sixpence and one penny, respectively.
These low prices, made possible by their policy of selling the books at
cost or below cost," etc.--New York Sun, February 25, 1903.
CHAPTER IX
We may now make a final footing-up of Mrs. Eddy, and see what she is, in
the fulness of her powers. She is
The Massachusetts Metaphysical College
Pastor Emeritus;
President;
Board of Directors;
Board of Education;
Board of Lectureships;
Future Board of Trustees,
Proprietor of the Publishing-House and Periodicals;
Treasurer;
Clerk;
Proprietor of the Teachers;
Proprietor of the Lecturers;
Proprietor of the Missionaries;
Proprietor of the Readers;
Dictator of the Services; sole Voice of the Pulpit;
Proprietor of the Sanhedrin;
Sole Proprietor of the Creed. (Copyrighted.);
Indisputable Autocrat of the Branch Churches, with their life and death
in her hands;
Sole Thinker for The First Church (and the others);
Sole and Infallible Expounder of Doctrine, in life and in death;
Sole permissible Discoverer, Denouncer, Judge, and Executioner of
Ostensible Hypnotists;
Fifty-handed God of Excommunication--with a thunderbolt in every hand;
Appointer and Installer of the Pastor of all the Churches--the Perpetual
Pastor-Universal, Science and Health, "the Comforter."
CHAPTER X
There she stands-painted by herself. No witness but herself has been
allowed to testify. She stands there painted by her acts, and decorated
by her words. When she talks, she has only a decorative value as a
witness, either for or against herself, for she deals mainly in
unsupported assertion; and in the rare cases where she puts forward a
verifiable fact she gets out of it a meaning which it refuses to furnish
to anybody else. Also, when she talks, she is unstable, she wanders, she
is incurably inconsistent; what she says to-day she contradicts tomorrow.
But her acts are consistent. They are always faithful to her, they never
misinterpret her, they are a mirror which always reflects her exactly,
precisely, minutely, unerringly, and always the same, to date, with only
those progressive little natural changes in stature, dress, complexion,
mood, and carriage that mark--exteriorly--the march of the years and
record the accumulations of experience, while--interiorly--through all
this steady drift of evolution the one essential detail, the commanding
detail, the master detail of the make-up remains as it was in the
beginning, suffers no change and can suffer none; the basis of the
character; the temperament, the disposition, that indestructible iron
framework upon which the character is built, and whose shape it must
take, and keep, throughout life. We call it a person's nature.
The man who is born stingy can be taught to give liberally--with his
hands; but not with his heart. The man born kind and compassionate can
have that disposition crushed down out of sight by embittering
experience; but if it were an organ the post-mortem would find it still
in his corpse. The man born ambitious of power and glory may live long
without finding it out, but when the opportunity comes he will know, will
strike for the largest thing within the limit of his chances at the
time-constable, perhaps--and will be glad and proud when he gets it, and
will write home about it. But he will not stop with that start; his
appetite will come again; and by-and-by again, and yet again; and when he
has climbed to police commissioner it will at last begin to dawn upon him
that what his Napoleon soul wants and was born for is something away
higher up--he does not quite know what, but Circumstance and Opportunity
will indicate the direction and he will cut a road through and find out.
I think Mrs. Eddy was born with a far-seeing business-eye, but did not
know it; and with a great organizing and executive talent, and did not
know it; and with a large appetite for power and distinction, and did not
know it. I think the reason that her make did not show up until middle
life was that she had General Grant's luck--Circumstance and Opportunity
did not come her way when she was younger. The qualities that were born
in her had to wait for circumstance and opportunity--but they were there:
they were there to stay, whether they ever got a chance to fructify or
not. If they had come early, they would have found her ready and
competent. And they--not she--would have determined what they would set
her at and what they would make of her. If they had elected to
commission her as second-assistant cook in a bankrupt boarding-house,
I know the rest of it--I know what would have happened. She would have
owned the boarding-house within six months; she would have had the late
proprietor on salary and humping himself, as the worldly say; she would
have had that boarding-house spewing money like a mint; she would have
worked the servants and the late landlord up to the limit; she would have
squeezed the boarders till they wailed, and by some mysterious quality
born in her she would have kept the affections of certain of the lot
whose love and esteem she valued, and flung the others down the back
area; in two years she would own all the boarding-houses in the town, in
five all the boarding-houses in the State, in twenty all the hotels in
America, in forty all the hotels on the planet, and would sit at home
with her finger on a button and govern the whole combination as easily as
a bench-manager governs a dog-show.
It would be a grand thing to see, and I feel a kind of disappointment
--but never mind, a religion is better and larger; and there is more to
it. And I have not been steeping myself in Christian Science all these
weeks without finding out that the one sensible thing to do with a
disappointment is to put it out of your mind and think of something
cheerfuler.
We outsiders cannot conceive of Mrs. Eddy's Christian Science Religion as
being a sudden and miraculous birth, but only as a growth from a seed
planted by circumstances, and developed stage by stage by command and
compulsion of the same force. What the stages were we cannot know, but
are privileged to guess. She may have gotten the mental-healing idea
from Quimby--it had been experimented with for ages, and was no one's
special property. [For the present, for convenience' sake, let us
proceed upon the hypothesis that that was all she got of him, and that
she put up the rest of the assets herself. This will strain us, but let
us try it.] In each and all its forms and under all its many names,
mental healing had had limits, always, and they were rather narrow ones
--Mrs. Eddy, let us imagine, removed the fence, abolished the frontiers.
Not by expanding mental-healing, but by absorbing its small bulk into the
vaster bulk of Christian Science--Divine Science, The Holy Ghost, the
Comforter--which was a quite different and sublimer force, and one which
had long lain dormant and unemployed.
The Christian Scientist believes that the Spirit of God (life and love)
pervades the universe like an atmosphere; that whoso will study Science
and Health can get from it the secret of how to inhale that transforming
air; that to breathe it is to be made new; that from the new man all
sorrow, all care, all miseries of the mind vanish away, for that only
peace, contentment and measureless joy can live in that divine fluid;
that it purifies the body from disease, which is a vicious creation of
the gross human mind, and cannot continue to exist in the presence of the
Immortal Mind, the renewing Spirit of God.
The Scientist finds this reasonable, natural, and not harder to believe
than that the disease germ, a creature of darkness, perishes when exposed
to the light of the great sun--a new revelation of profane science which
no one doubts. He reminds us that the actinic ray, shining upon lupus,
cures it--a horrible disease which was incurable fifteen years ago, and
had been incurable for ten million years before; that this wonder,
unbelievable by the physicians at first, is believed by them now; and so
he is tranquilly confident that the time is coming when the world will be
educated up to a point where it will comprehend and grant that the light
of the Spirit of God, shining unobstructed upon the soul, is an actinic
ray which can purge both mind and body from disease and set them free and
make them whole.
It is apparent, then, that in Christian Science it is not one man's mind
acting upon another man's mind that heals; that it is solely the Spirit
of God that heals; that the healer's mind performs no office but to
convey that force to the patient; that it is merely the wire which
carries the electric fluid, so to speak, and delivers the message.
Therefore, if these things be true, mental-healing and Science-healing
are separate and distinct processes, and no kinship exists between them.
To heal the body of its ills and pains is a mighty benefaction, but in
our day our physicians and surgeons work a thousand miracles--prodigies
which would have ranked as miracles fifty years ago--and they have so
greatly extended their domination over disease that we feel so well
protected that we are able to look with a good deal of composure and
absence of hysterics upon the claims of new competitors in that field.
But there is a mightier benefaction than the healing of the body, and
that is the healing of the spirit--which is Christian Science's other
claim. So far as I know, so far as I can find out, it makes it good.
Personally I have not known a Scientist who did not seem serene,
contented, unharassed. I have not found an outsider whose observation of
Scientists furnished him a view that differed from my own. Buoyant
spirits, comfort of mind, freedom from care these happinesses we all
have, at intervals; but in the spaces between, dear me, the black hours!
They have put a curse upon the life of every human being I have ever
known, young or old. I concede not a single exception. Unless it might
be those Scientists just referred to. They may have been playing a part
with me; I hope they were not, and I believe they were not.
Time will test the Science's claim. If time shall make it good; if time
shall prove that the Science can heal the persecuted spirit of man and
banish its troubles and keep it serene and sunny and content--why, then
Mrs. Eddy will have a monument that will reach above the clouds. For if
she did not hit upon that imperial idea and evolve it and deliver it, its
discoverer can never be identified with certainty, now, I think. It is
the giant feature, it is the sun that rides in the zenith of Christian
Science, the auxiliary features are of minor consequence [Let us still
leave the large "if" aside, for the present, and proceed as if it had no
existence.]
It is not supposable that Mrs. Eddy realized, at first, the size of her
plunder. (No, find--that is the word; she did not realize the size of
her find, at first.) It had to grow upon her, by degrees, in accordance
with the inalterable custom of Circumstance, which works by stages, and
by stages only, and never furnishes any mind with all the materials for a
large idea at one time.
In the beginning, Mrs. Eddy was probably interested merely in the
mental-healing detail, and perhaps mainly interested in it pecuniary,
for she was poor.
She would succeed in anything she undertook. She would attract pupils,
and her commerce would grow. She would inspire in patient and pupil
confidence in her earnestness, her history is evidence that she would not
fail of that.
There probably came a time, in due course, when her students began to
think there was something deeper in her teachings than they had been
suspecting--a mystery beyond mental-healing, and higher. It is
conceivable that by consequence their manner towards her changed little
by little, and from respectful became reverent. It is conceivable that
this would have an influence upon her; that it would incline her to
wonder if their secret thought--that she was inspired--might not be a
well-grounded guess. It is conceivable that as time went on the thought
in their minds and its reflection in hers might solidify into conviction.
She would remember, then, that as a child she had been called, more than
once, by a mysterious voice--just as had happened to little Samuel.
(Mentioned in her Autobiography.) She would be impressed by that ancient
reminiscence, now, and it could have a prophetic meaning for her.
It is conceivable that the persuasive influences around her and within
her would give a new and powerful impulse to her philosophizings, and
that from this, in time, would result that great birth, the healing of
body and mind by the inpouring of the Spirit of God--the central and
dominant idea of Christian Science--and that when this idea came she
would not doubt that it was an inspiration direct from Heaven.
CHAPTER XI
[I must rest a little, now. To sit here and painstakingly spin out a
scheme which imagines Mrs. Eddy, of all people, working her mind on a
plane above commercialism; imagines her thinking, philosophizing,
discovering majestic things; and even imagines her dealing in
sincerities--to be frank, I find it a large contract But I have begun it,
and I will go through with it.]
CHAPTER XII
It is evident that she made disciples fast, and that their belief in her
and in the authenticity of her heavenly ambassadorship was not of the
lukewarm and half-way sort, but was profoundly earnest and sincere.
Her book was issued from the press in 1875, it began its work of
convert-making, and within six years she had successfully launched a new
Religion and a new system of healing, and was teaching them to crowds of
eager students in a College of her own, at prices so extraordinary that
we are almost compelled to accept her statement (no, her guarded
intimation) that the rates were arranged on high, since a mere human
being unacquainted with commerce and accustomed to think in pennies
could hardly put up such a hand as that without supernatural help.
From this stage onward--Mrs. Eddy being what she was--the rest of the
development--stages would follow naturally and inevitably.
But if she had been anybody else, there would have been a different
arrangement of them, with different results. Being the extraordinary
person she was, she realized her position and its possibilities; realized
the possibilities, and had the daring to use them for all they were
worth.
We have seen what her methods were after she passed the stage where her
divine ambassadorship was granted its executer in the hearts and minds of
her followers; we have seen how steady and fearless and calculated and
orderly was her march thenceforth from conquest to conquest; we have seen
her strike dead, without hesitancy, any hostile or questionable force
that rose in her path: first, the horde of pretenders that sprang up and
tried to take her Science and its market away from her--she crushed them,
she obliterated them; when her own National Christian Science Association
became great in numbers and influence, and loosely and dangerously
garrulous, and began to expound the doctrines according to its own
uninspired notions, she took up her sponge without a tremor of fear and
wiped that Association out; when she perceived that the preachers in her
pulpits were becoming afflicted with doctrine-tinkering, she recognized
the danger of it, and did not hesitate nor temporize, but promptly
dismissed the whole of them in a day, and abolished their office
permanently; we have seen that, as fast as her power grew, she was
competent to take the measure of it, and that as fast as its expansion
suggested to her gradually awakening native ambition a higher step she
took it; and so, by this evolutionary process, we have seen the gross
money-lust relegated to second place, and the lust of empire and glory
rise above it. A splendid dream; and by force of the qualities born in
her she is making it come true.
These qualities--and the capacities growing out of them by the nurturing
influences of training, observation, and experience seem to be clearly
indicated by the character of her career and its achievements. They seem
to be:
A clear head for business, and a phenomenally long one;
Clear understanding of business situations;
Accuracy in estimating the opportunities they offer;
Intelligence in planning a business move;
Firmness in sticking to it after it has been decided upon;
Extraordinary daring;
Indestructible persistency;
Devouring ambition;
Limitless selfishness;
A knowledge of the weaknesses and poverties and docilities of human
nature and how to turn them to account which has never been surpassed, if
ever equalled.
And--necessarily--the foundation-stone of Mrs. Eddy's character is a
never-wavering confidence in herself.
It is a granite character. And--quite naturally--a measure of the talc
of smallnesses common to human nature is mixed up in it and distributed
through it. When Mrs. Eddy is not dictating servilities from her throne
in the clouds to her official domestics in Boston or to her far-spread
subjects round about the planet, but is down on the ground, she is kin to
us and one of us: sentimental as a girl, garrulous, ungrammatical,
incomprehensible, affected, vain of her little human ancestry, unstable,
inconsistent, unreliable in statement, and naively and everlastingly
self-contradictory-oh, trivial and common and commonplace as the
commonest of us! just a Napoleon as Madame de Remusat saw him, a brass
god with clay legs.
CHAPTER XIII
In drawing Mrs. Eddy's portrait it has been my purpose to restrict myself
to materials furnished by herself, and I believe I have done that. If I
have misinterpreted any of her acts, it was not done intentionally.
It will be noticed that in skeletonizing a list of the qualities which
have carried her to the dizzy summit which she occupies, I have not
mentioned the power which was the commanding force employed in achieving
that lofty flight. It did not belong in that list; it was a force that
was not a detail of her character, but was an outside one. It was the
power which proceeded from her people's recognition of her as a
supernatural personage, conveyer of the Latest Word, and divinely
commissioned to deliver it to the world. The form which such a
recognition takes, consciously or unconsciously, is worship; and worship
does not question nor criticize, it obeys. The object of it does not
need to coddle it, bribe it, beguile it, reason with it, convince it--it
commands it; that is sufficient; the obedience rendered is not reluctant,
but prompt and whole-hearted. Admiration for a Napoleon, confidence in
him, pride in him, affection for him, can lift him high and carry him
far; and these are forms of worship, and are strong forces, but they are
worship of a mere human being, after all, and are infinitely feeble, as
compared with those that are generated by that other worship, the worship
of a divine personage. Mrs. Eddy has this efficient worship, this massed
and centralized force, this force which is indifferent to opposition,
untroubled by fear, and goes to battle singing, like Cromwell's soldiers;
and while she has it she can command and it will obey, and maintain her
on her throne, and extend her empire.
She will have it until she dies; and then we shall see a curious and
interesting further development of her revolutionary work begin.
CHAPTER XIV
The President and Board of Directors will succeed her, and the government
will go on without a hitch. The By-laws will bear that interpretation.
All the Mother-Church's vast powers are concentrated in that Board. Mrs.
Eddy's unlimited personal reservations make the Board's ostensible
supremacy, during her life, a sham, and the Board itself a shadow. But
Mrs. Eddy has not made those reservations for any one but herself--they
are distinctly personal, they bear her name, they are not usable by
another individual. When she dies her reservations die, and the Board's
shadow-powers become real powers, without the change of any important
By-law, and the Board sits in her place as absolute and irresponsible a
sovereign as she was.
It consists of but five persons, a much more manageable Cardinalate than
the Roman Pope's. I think it will elect its Pope from its own body, and
that it will fill its own vacancies. An elective Papacy is a safe and
wise system, and a long-liver.
CHAPTER XV
We may take that up now.
It is not a single if, but a several-jointed one; not an oyster, but a
vertebrate.
1. Did Mrs. Eddy borrow from Quimby the Great Idea, or only the little
one, the old-timer, the ordinary mental-healing-healing by "mortal" mind?
2. If she borrowed the Great Idea, did she carry it away in her head, or
in manuscript?
3. Did she hit upon the Great Idea herself? By the Great Idea I mean,
of course, the conviction that the Force involved was still existent, and
could be applied now just as it was applied by Christ's Disciples and
their converts, and as successfully.
4. Did she philosophize it, systematize it, and write it down in a book?
5. Was it she, and not another, that built a new Religion upon the book
and organized it?
I think No. 5 can be answered with a Yes, and dismissed from the
controversy. And I think that the Great Idea, great as it was, would
have enjoyed but a brief activity, and would then have gone to sleep
again for some more centuries, but for the perpetuating impulse it got
from that organized and tremendous force.
As for Nos. 1, 2, and 4, the hostiles contend that Mrs. Eddy got the
Great Idea from Quimby and carried it off in manuscript. But their
testimony, while of consequence, lacks the most important detail; so far
as my information goes, the Quimby manuscript has not been produced. I
think we cannot discuss No. 1 and No. 2 profitably. Let them go.
For me, No. 3 has a mild interest, and No. 4 a violent one.
As regards No. 3, Mrs. Eddy was brought up, from the cradle, an
old-time, boiler-iron, Westminster-Catechism Christian, and knew her
Bible as well as Captain Kydd knew his, "when he sailed, when he sailed,"
and perhaps as sympathetically. The Great Idea had struck a million
Bible-readers before her as being possible of resurrection and
application--it must have struck as many as that, and been cogitated,
indolently, doubtingly, then dropped and forgotten--and it could have
struck her, in due course. But how it could interest her, how it could
appeal to her--with her make this a thing that is difficult to
understand.
For the thing back of it is wholly gracious and beautiful: the power,
through loving mercifulness and compassion, to heal fleshly ills and
pains and grief--all--with a word, with a touch of the hand! This power
was given by the Saviour to the Disciples, and to all the converted.
All--every one. It was exercised for generations afterwards. Any
Christian who was in earnest and not a make-believe, not a policy
--Christian, not a Christian for revenue only, had that healing power,
and could cure with it any disease or any hurt or damage possible to
human flesh and bone. These things are true, or they are not. If they
were true seventeen and eighteen and nineteen centuries ago it would be
difficult to satisfactorily explain why or how or by what argument that
power should be nonexistent in Christians now.
To wish to exercise it could occur to Mrs. Eddy--but would it?
Grasping, sordid, penurious, famishing for everything she sees--money,
power, glory--vain, untruthful, jealous, despotic, arrogant, insolent,
pitiless where thinkers and hypnotists are concerned, illiterate,
shallow, incapable of reasoning outside of commercial lines, immeasurably
selfish--
Of course the Great Idea could strike her, we have to grant that, but why
it should interest her is a question which can easily overstrain the
imagination and bring on nervous prostration, or something like that, and
is better left alone by the judicious, it seems to me--
Unless we call to our help the alleged other side of Mrs. Eddy's make and
character the side which her multitude of followers see, and sincerely
believe in. Fairness requires that their view be stated here. It is the
opposite of the one which I have drawn from Mrs. Eddy's history and from
her By-laws. To her followers she is this:
Patient, gentle, loving, compassionate, noble hearted, unselfish,
sinless, widely cultured, splendidly equipped mentally, a profound
thinker, an able writer, a divine personage, an inspired messenger whose
acts are dictated from the Throne, and whose every utterance is the Voice
of God.
She has delivered to them a religion which has revolutionized their
lives, banished the glooms that shadowed them, and filled them and
flooded them with sunshine and gladness and peace; a religion which has
no hell; a religion whose heaven is not put off to another time, with a
break and a gulf between, but begins here and now, and melts into
eternity as fancies of the waking day melt into the dreams of sleep.
They believe it is a Christianity that is in the New Testament; that it
has always been there, that in the drift of ages it was lost through
disuse and neglect, and that this benefactor has found it and given it
back to men, turning the night of life into day, its terrors into myths,
its lamentations into songs of emancipation and rejoicing.
There we have Mrs. Eddy as her followers see her. She has lifted them
out of grief and care and doubt and fear, and made their lives beautiful;
she found them wandering forlorn in a wintry wilderness, and has led them
to a tropic paradise like that of which the poet sings:
"O, islands there are on the face of the deep
Where the leaves never fade and the skies never weep."
To ask them to examine with a microscope the character of such a
benefactor; to ask them to examine it at all; to ask them to look at a
blemish which another person believes he has found in it--well, in their
place could you do it? Would you do it? Wouldn't you be ashamed to do
it? If a tramp had rescued your child from fire and death, and saved its
mother's heart from breaking, could you see his rags? Could you smell
his breath? Mrs. Eddy has done more than that for these people.
They are prejudiced witnesses. To the credit of human nature it is not
possible that they should be otherwise. They sincerely believe that Mrs.
Eddy's character is pure and perfect and beautiful, and her history
without stain or blot or blemish. But that does not settle it. They
sincerely believe she did not borrow the Great Idea from Quimby, but hit
upon it herself. It may be so, and it could be so. Let it go--there is
no way to settle it. They believe she carried away no Quimby
manuscripts. Let that go, too--there is no way to settle it. They
believe that she, and not another, built the Religion upon the book, and
organized it. I believe it, too.
Finally, they believe that she philosophized Christian Science, explained
it, systematized it, and wrote it all out with her own hand in the book
Science and Health.
I am not able to believe that. Let us draw the line there. The known
and undisputed products of her pen are a formidable witness against her.
They do seem to me to prove, quite clearly and conclusively, that
writing, upon even simple subjects, is a difficult labor for her: that
she has never been able to write anything above third-rate English; that
she is weak in the matter of grammar; that she has but a rude and dull
sense of the values of words; that she so lacks in the matter of literary
precision that she can seldom put a thought into words that express it
lucidly to the reader and leave no doubts in his mind as to whether he
has rightly understood or not; that she cannot even draught a Preface
that a person can fully comprehend, nor one which can by any art be
translated into a fully understandable form; that she can seldom inject
into a Preface even single sentences whose meaning is uncompromisingly
clear--yet Prefaces are her specialty, if she has one.
Mrs. Eddy's known and undisputed writings are very limited in bulk; they
exhibit no depth, no analytical quality, no thought above school
composition size, and but juvenile ability in handling thoughts of even
that modest magnitude. She has a fine commercial ability, and could
govern a vast railway system in great style; she could draught a set of
rules that Satan himself would say could not be improved on--for
devilish effectiveness--by his staff; but we know, by our excursions
among the Mother-Church's By-laws, that their English would discredit the
deputy baggage-smasher. I am quite sure that Mrs. Eddy cannot write well
upon any subject, even a commercial one.
In the very first revision of Science and Health (1883), Mrs. Eddy wrote
a Preface which is an unimpeachable witness that the rest of the book was
written by somebody else. I have put it in the Appendix along with a
page or two taken from the body of the book, and will ask the reader to
compare the labored and lumbering and confused gropings of this Preface
with the easy and flowing and direct English of the other exhibit, and
see if he can believe that the one hand and brain produced both.
And let him take the Preface apart, sentence by sentence, and searchingly
examine each sentence word by word, and see if he can find half a dozen
sentences whose meanings he is so sure of that he can rephrase them--in
words of his own--and reproduce what he takes to be those meanings.
Money can be lost on this game. I know, for I am the one that lost it.
Now let the reader turn to the excerpt which I have made from the chapter
on "Prayer" (last year's edition of Science and Health), and compare that
wise and sane and elevated and lucid and compact piece of work with the
aforesaid Preface, and with Mrs. Eddy's poetry concerning the gymnastic
trees, and Minerva's not yet effete sandals, and the wreaths imported
from Erudition's bower for the decoration of Plymouth Rock, and the
Plague-spot and Bacilli, and my other exhibits (turn back to my Chapters
I. and II.) from the Autobiography, and finally with the late
Communication concerning me, and see if he thinks anybody's affirmation,
or anybody's sworn testimony, or any other testimony of any imaginable
kind would ever be likely to convince him that Mrs. Eddy wrote that
chapter on Prayer.
I do not wish to impose my opinion on any one who will not permit it, but
such as it is I offer it here for what it is worth. I cannot believe,
and I do not believe, that Mrs. Eddy originated any of the thoughts and
reasonings out of which the book Science and Health is constructed; and I
cannot believe, and do not believe that she ever wrote any part of that
book.
I think that if anything in the world stands proven, and well and solidly
proven, by unimpeachable testimony--the treacherous testimony of her own
pen in her known and undisputed literary productions--it is that Mrs.
Eddy is not capable of thinking upon high planes, nor of reasoning
clearly nor writing intelligently upon low ones.
Inasmuch as--in my belief--the very first editions of the book Science
and Health were far above the reach of Mrs. Eddy's mental and literary
abilities, I think she has from the very beginning been claiming as her
own another person's book, and wearing as her own property laurels
rightfully belonging to that person--the real author of Science and
Health. And I think the reason--and the only reason--that he has not
protested is because his work was not exposed to print until after he was
safely dead.
That with an eye to business, and by grace of her business talent, she
has restored to the world neglected and abandoned features of the
Christian religion which her thousands of followers find gracious and
blessed and contenting, I recognize and confess; but I am convinced that
every single detail of the work except just that one--the delivery of the
Product to the world--was conceived and performed by another.
APPENDIX A
ORIGINAL FIRST PREFACE TO SCIENCE AND HEALTH
There seems a Christian necessity of learning God's power and purpose to
heal both mind and body. This thought grew out of our early seeking Him
in all our ways, and a hopeless as singular invalidism that drugs
increased instead of diminished, and hygiene benefited only for a season.
By degrees we have drifted into more spiritual latitudes of thought, and
experimented as we advanced until demonstrating fully the power of mind
over the body. About the year 1862, having heard of a mesmerist in
Portland who was treating the sick by manipulation, we visited him; he
helped us for a time, then we relapsed somewhat. After his decease, and
a severe casualty deemed fatal by skilful physicians, we discovered that
the Principle of all healing and the law that governs it is God, a divine
Principle, and a spiritual not material law, and regained health.
It was not an individual or mortal mind acting upon another so-called
mind that healed us. It was the glorious truths of Christian Science
that we discovered as we neared that verge of so-called material life
named death; yea, it was the great Shekinah, the spirit of Life, Truth,
and Love illuminating our understanding of the action and might of
Omnipotence! The old gentleman to whom we have referred had some very
advanced views on healing, but he was not avowedly religious neither
scholarly. We interchanged thoughts on the subject of healing the sick.
I restored some patients of his that he failed to heal, and left in his
possession some manuscripts of mine containing corrections of his
desultory pennings, which I am informed at his decease passed into the
hands of a patient of his, now residing in Scotland. He died in 1865 and
left no published works. The only manuscript that we ever held of his,
longer than to correct it, was one of perhaps a dozen pages, most of
which we had composed. He manipulated the sick; hence his ostensible
method of healing was physical instead of mental.
We helped him in the esteem of the public by our writings, but never knew
of his stating orally or in writing that he treated his patients
mentally; never heard him give any directions to that effect; and have it
from one of his patients, who now asserts that he was the founder of
mental healing, that he never revealed to anyone his method. We refer to
these facts simply to refute the calumnies and false claims of our
enemies, that we are preferring dishonest claims to the discovery and
founding at this period of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science.
The Science and laws of a purely mental healing and their method of
application through spiritual power alone, else a mental argument against
disease, are our own discovery at this date. True, the Principle is
divine and eternal, but the application of it to heal the sick had been
lost sight of, and required to be again spiritually discerned and its
science discovered, that man might retain it through the understanding.
Since our discovery in 1866 of the divine science of Christian Healing,
we have labored with tongue and pen to found this system. In this
endeavor every obstacle has been thrown in our path that the envy and
revenge of a few disaffected students could devise. The superstition and
ignorance of even this period have not failed to contribute their mite
towards misjudging us, while its Christian advancement and scientific
research have helped sustain our feeble efforts.
Since our first Edition of Science and Health, published in 1875, two of
the aforesaid students have plagiarized and pirated our works. In the
issues of E. J. A., almost exclusively ours, were thirteen paragraphs,
without credit, taken verbatim from our books.
Not one of our printed works was ever copied or abstracted from the
published or from the unpublished writings of anyone. Throughout our
publications of Metaphysical Healing or Christian Science, when writing
or dictating them, we have given ourselves to contemplation wholly apart
from the observation of the material senses: to look upon a copy would
have distracted our thoughts from the subject before us. We were seldom
able to copy our own compositions, and have employed an amanuensis for
the last six years. Every work that we have had published has been
extemporaneously written; and out of fifty lectures and sermons that we
have delivered the last year, forty-four have been extemporaneous. We
have distributed many of our unpublished manuscripts; loaned to one of
our youngest students, R. K--------y, between three and four hundred pages,
of which we were sole author--giving him liberty to copy but not to
publish them.
Leaning on the sustaining Infinite with loving trust, the trials of
to-day grow brief, and to-morrow is big with blessings.
The wakeful shepherd, tending his flocks, beholds from the mountain's top
the first faint morning beam ere cometh the risen day. So from Soul's
loftier summits shines the pale star to prophet-shepherd, and it
traverses night, over to where the young child lies, in cradled
obscurity, that shall waken a world. Over the night of error dawn the
morning beams and guiding star of Truth, and "the wise men" are led by it
to Science, which repeats the eternal harmony that it reproduced, in
proof of immortality. The time for thinkers has come; and the time for
revolutions, ecclesiastical and civil, must come. Truth, independent of
doctrines or time-honored systems, stands at the threshold of history.
Contentment with the past, or the cold conventionality of custom, may no
longer shut the door on science; though empires fall, "He whose right it
is shall reign." Ignorance of God should no longer be the stepping-stone
to faith; understanding Him, "whom to know aright is Life eternal," is
the only guaranty of obedience.
This volume may not open a new thought, and make it at once familiar. It
has the sturdy task of a pioneer, to hack away at the tall oaks and cut
the rough granite, leaving future ages to declare what it has done. We
made our first discovery of the adaptation of metaphysics to the
treatment of disease in the winter of 1866; since then we have tested the
Principle on ourselves and others, and never found it to fail to prove
the statements herein made of it. We must learn the science of Life, to
reach the perfection of man. To understand God as the Principle of all
being, and to live in accordance with this Principle, is the Science of
Life. But to reproduce this harmony of being, the error of personal
sense must yield to science, even as the science of music corrects tones
caught from the ear, and gives the sweet concord of sound. There are
many theories of physic and theology, and many calls in each of their
directions for the right way; but we propose to settle the question of
"What is Truth?" on the ground of proof, and let that method of healing
the sick and establishing Christianity be adopted that is found to give
the most health and to make the best Christians; science will then have a
fair field, in which case we are assured of its triumph over all opinions
and beliefs. Sickness and sin have ever had their doctors; but the
question is, Have they become less because of them? The longevity of our
antediluvians would say, No! and the criminal records of today utter
their voices little in favor of such a conclusion. Not that we would
deny to Caesar the things that are his, but that we ask for the things
that belong to Truth; and safely affirm, from the demonstrations we have
been able to make, that the science of man understood would have
eradicated sin, sickness, and death, in a less period than six thousand
years. We find great difficulties in starting this work right. Some
shockingly false claims are already made to a metaphysical practice;
mesmerism, its very antipodes, is one of them. Hitherto we have never,
in a single instance of our discovery, found the slightest resemblance
between mesmerism and metaphysics. No especial idiosyncrasy is requisite
to acquire a knowledge of metaphysical healing; spiritual sense is more
important to its discernment than the intellect; and those who would
learn this science without a high moral standard of thought and action,
will fail to understand it until they go up higher. Owing to our
explanations constantly vibrating between the same points, an irksome
repetition of words must occur; also the use of capital letters, genders,
and technicalities peculiar to the science. Variety of language, or
beauty of diction, must give place to close analysis and unembellished
thought. "Hoping all things, enduring all things," to do good to our
enemies, to bless them that curse us, and to bear to the sorrowing and
the sick consolation and healing, we commit these pages to posterity.
MARY BAKER G. EDDY.
APPENDIX B
The Gospel narratives bear brief testimony even to the life of our great
Master. His spiritual noumenon and phenomenon, silenced portraiture.
Writers, less wise than the Apostles, essayed in the Apocryphal New
Testament, a legendary and traditional history of the early life of
Jesus. But Saint Paul summarized the character of Jesus as the model of
Christianity, in these words: "Consider Him who endured such
contradictions of sinners against Himself. Who for the joy that was set
before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at
the right hand of the throne of God."
It may be that the mortal life battle still wages, and must continue till
its involved errors are vanquished by victory-bringing Science; but this
triumph will come! God is over all. He alone is our origin, aim, and
Being. The real man is not of the dust, nor is he ever created through
the flesh; for his father and mother are the one Spirit, and his brethren
are all the children of one parent, the eternal Good.
Any kind of literary composition was excessively difficult for Mrs. Eddy.
She found it grinding hard work to dig out anything to say. She
realized, at the above stage in her life, that with all her trouble she
had not been able to scratch together even material enough for a child's
Autobiography, and also that what she had secured was in the main not
valuable, not important, considering the age and the fame of the person
she was writing about; and so it occurred to her to attempt, in that
paragraph, to excuse the meagreness and poor quality of the feast she was
spreading, by letting on that she could do ever so much better if she
wanted to, but was under constraint of Divine etiquette. To feed with
more than a few indifferent crumbs a plebeian appetite for personal
details about Personages in her class was not the correct thing, and she
blandly points out that there is Precedent for this reserve. When Mrs.
Eddy tries to be artful--in literature--it is generally after the
manner of the ostrich; and with the ostrich's luck. Please try to find
the connection between the two paragraphs.--M. T.
APPENDIX C
The following is the spiritual signification of the Lord's Prayer:
Principle, eternal and harmonious,
Nameless and adorable Intelligence,
Thou art ever present and supreme.
And when this supremacy of Spirit shall appear, the dream of matter will
disappear.
Give us the understanding of Truth and Love.
And loving we shall learn God, and Truth will destroy all error.
And lead us unto the Life that is Soul, and deliver us from the errors of
sense, sin, sickness, and death,
For God is Life, Truth, and Love for ever.
--Science and Health, edition of 1881.
It seems to me that this one is distinctly superior to the one that was
inspired for last year's edition. It is strange, but to my mind plain,
that inspiring is an art which does not improve with practice.--M. T.
APPENDIX D
"For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain,
Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in
his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come
to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you,
What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them,
and ye shall have them.
"Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him."
--CHRIST JESUS.
The prayer that reclaims the sinner and heals the sick, is an absolute
faith that all things are possible to God--a spiritual understanding of
Him--an unselfed love. Regardless of what another may say or think on
this subject, I speak from experience. This prayer, combined with
self-sacrifice and toil, is the means whereby God has enabled me to
do what I have done for the religion and health of mankind.
Thoughts unspoken are not unknown to the divine Mind. Desire is prayer;
and no less can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may
be moulded and exalted before they take form in audible word, and in
deeds.
What are the motives for prayer? Do we pray to make ourselves better, or
to benefit those that hear us; to enlighten the Infinite, or to be heard
of men? Are we benefited by praying? Yes, the desire which goes forth
hungering after righteousness is blessed of our Father, and it does not
return unto us void.
God is not moved by the breath of praise to do more than He has already
done; nor can the Infinite do less than bestow all good, since He is
unchanging Wisdom and Love. We can do more for ourselves by humble
fervent petitions; but the All-loving does not grant them simply on the
ground of lip-service, for He already knows all.
Prayer cannot change the Science of Being, but it does bring us into
harmony with it. Goodness reaches the demonstration of Truth. A request
that another may work for us never does our work. The habit of pleading
with the divine Mind, as one pleads with a human being, perpetuates the
belief in God as humanly circumscribed--an error which impedes spiritual
growth.
God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more? God is Intelligence. Can we
inform the infinite Mind, or tell Him anything He does not already
comprehend? Do we hope to change perfection? Shall we plead for more at
the open fount, which always pours forth more than we receive? The
unspoken prayer does bring us nearer the Source of all existence and
blessedness.
Asking God to be God is a "vain repetition." God is "the same yesterday,
and to-day, and forever"; and He who is immutably right will do right,
without being reminded of His province. The wisdom of man is not
sufficient to warrant him in advising God.
Who would stand before a blackboard, and pray the principle of
mathematics to work out the problem? The rule is already established,
and it is our task to work out the solution. Shall we ask the divine
Principle of all goodness to do His own work? His work is done; and we
have only to avail ourselves of God's rule, in order to receive the
blessing thereof.
The divine Being must be reflected by man--else man is not the image and
likeness of the patient, tender, and true, the one "altogether lovely";
but to understand God is the work of eternity, and demands absolute
concentration of thought and energy.
How empty are our conceptions of Deity! We admit theoretically that God
is good, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite, and then we try to give
information to this infinite Mind; and plead for unmerited pardon, and a
liberal outpouring of benefactions. Are we really grateful for the good
already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we
have, and thus be fitted to receive more. Gratitude is much more than a
verbal expression of thanks Action expresses more gratitude than speech.
If we are ungrateful for Life, Truth, and Love, and yet return thanks to
God for all blessings, we are insincere; and incur the sharp censure our
Master pronounces on hypocrites. In such a case the only acceptable
prayer is to put the finger on the lips and remember our blessings.
While the heart is far from divine Truth and Love, we cannot conceal the
ingratitude of barren lives, for God knoweth all things.
What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace,
expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds. To keep the
commandments of our Master and follow his example, is our proper debt to
Him, and the only worthy evidence of our gratitude for all He has done.
Outward worship is not of itself sufficient to express loyal and
heartfelt gratitude, since He has said: "If ye love Me, keep My
Commandments."
The habitual struggle to be always good, is unceasing prayer. Its
motives are made manifest in the blessings they bring--which, if not
acknowledged in audible words, attest our worthiness to be made partakers
of Love.
Simply asking that we may love God will never make us love Him; but the
longing to be better and holier--expressed in daily watchfulness, and in
striving to assimilate more of the divine character--this will mould and
fashion us anew, until we awake in His likeness. We reach the Science of
Christianity through demonstration of the divine nature; but in this
wicked world goodness will "be evil spoken of," and patience must work
experience.
Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which
regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience,
enable us to follow Jesus' example. Long prayers, ecclesiasticism, and
creeds, have clipped the divine pinions of Love, and clad religion in
human robes. They materialize worship, hinder the Spirit, and keep man
from demonstrating his power over error.
Sorrow for wrong-doing is but one step towards reform, and the very
easiest step. The next and great step required by Wisdom is the test of
our sincerity--namely, reformation. To this end we are placed under the
stress of circumstances. Temptation bids us repeat the offence, and woe
comes in return for what is done. So it will ever be, till we learn that
there is no discount in the law of justice, and that we must pay "the
uttermost farthing." The measure ye mete "shall be measured to you
again," and it will be full "and running over."
Saints and sinners get their full award, but not always in this world.
The followers of Christ drank His cup. Ingratitude and persecution
filled it to the brim; but God pours the riches of His love into the
understanding and affections, giving us strength according to our day.
Sinners flourish "like a green bay-tree"; but, looking farther, the
Psalmist could see their end--namely, the destruction of sin through
suffering.
Prayer is sometimes used, as a confessional to cancel sin. This error
impedes true religion. Sin is forgiven, only as it is destroyed by
Christ-Truth and Life If prayer nourishes the belief that sin is
cancelled, and that man is made better by merely praying, it is an evil.
He grows worse who continues in sin because he thinks himself forgiven.
An apostle says that the Son of God (Christ) came to "destroy the works
of the devil." We should follow our divine Exemplar, and seek the
destruction of all evil works, error and disease included. We cannot
escape the penalty due for sin. The Scriptures say, that if we deny
Christ, "He also will deny us."
The divine Love corrects and governs man. Men may pardon, but this
divine Principle alone reforms the sinner. God is not separate from the
wisdom He bestows. The talents He gives we must improve. Calling on Him
to forgive our work, badly done or left undone, implies the vain
supposition that we have nothing to do but to ask pardon, and that
afterwards we shall be free to repeat the offence.
To cause suffering, as the result of sin, is the means of destroying sin.
Every supposed pleasure in sin will furnish more than its equivalent of
pain, until belief in material life and sin is destroyed. To reach
heaven, the harmony of Being, we must understand the divine Principle of
Being.
"God is Love." More than this we cannot ask; higher we cannot look;
farther we cannot go. To suppose that God forgives or punishes sin,
according as His mercy is sought or unsought, is to misunderstand Love
and make prayer the safety-valve for wrong-doing.
Jesus uncovered and rebuked sin before He cast it out. Of a sick woman
He said that Satan had bound her; and to Peter He said, "Thou art an
offense unto me." He came teaching and showing men how to destroy sin,
sickness, and death. He said of the fruitless tree, "It is hewn down."
It is believed by many that a certain magistrate, who lived in the time
of Jesus, left this record: "His rebuke is fearful." The strong language
of our Master confirms this description.
The only civil sentence which He had for error was, "Get thee behind Me,
Satan." Still stronger evidence that Jesus' reproof was pointed and
pungent is in His own words--showing the necessity for such forcible
utterance, when He cast out devils and healed the sick and sinful. The
relinquishment of error deprives material sense of its false claims.
Audible prayer is impressive; it gives momentary solemnity and elevation
to thought; but does it produce any lasting benefit? Looking deeply into
these things, we find that "a zeal . . . not according to knowledge,"
gives occasion for reaction unfavorable to spiritual growth, sober
resolve, and wholesome perception of God's requirements. The motives for
verbal prayer may embrace too much love of applause to induce or
encourage Christian sentiment.
Physical sensation, not Soul, produces material ecstasy, and emotions.
If spiritual sense always guided men at such times, there would grow out
of those ecstatic moments a higher experience and a better life, with
more devout self-abnegation, and purity. A self-satisfied ventilation of
fervent sentiments never makes a Christian. God is not influenced by
man. The "divine ear" is not an auditorial nerve. It is the
all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each want of man is always
known, and by whom it will be supplied.
The danger from audible prayer is, that it may lead us into temptation.
By it we may become involuntary hypocrites, uttering desires which are
not real, and consoling ourselves in the midst of sin, with the
recollection that we have prayed over it--or mean to ask forgiveness at
some later day. Hypocrisy is fatal to religion.
A wordy prayer may afford a quiet sense of self-justification, though it
makes the sinner a hypocrite. We never need despair of an honest heart,
but there is little hope for those who only come spasmodically face to
face with their wickedness, and then seek to hide it. Their prayers are
indexes which do not correspond with their character. They hold secret
fellowship with sin; and such externals are spoken of by Jesus as "like
unto whited sepulchres . . . full of all uncleanness."
If a man, though apparently fervent and prayerful, is impure, and
therefore insincere, what must be the comment upon him? If he had
reached the loftiness of his prayer, there would be no occasion for such
comment. If we feel the aspiration, humility, gratitude, and love which
our words express--this God accepts; and it is wise not to try to deceive
ourselves or others, for "there is nothing covered that shall not be
revealed." Professions and audible prayers are like charity in one
respect--they "cover a multitude of sins." Praying for humility, with
whatever fervency of expression, does not always mean a desire for it.
If we turn away from the poor, we are not ready to receive the reward of
Him who blesses the poor. We confess to having a very wicked heart, and
ask that it may be laid bare before us; but do we not already know more
of this heart than we are willing to have our neighbor see?
We ought to examine ourselves, and learn what is the affection and
purpose of the heart; for this alone can show us what we honestly are.
If a friend informs us of a fault, do we listen to the rebuke patiently,
and credit what is said? Do we not rather give thanks that we are "not
as other men?" During many years the author has been most grateful for
merited rebuke. The sting lies in unmerited censure--in the falsehood
which does no one any good.
The test of all prayer lies in the answer to these questions: Do we love
our neighbor better because of this asking? Do we pursue the old
selfishness, satisfied with having prayed for something better, though we
give no evidence of the sincerity of our requests by living consistently
with our prayer? If selfishness has given place to kindness, we shall
regard our neighbor unselfishly, and bless them that curse us; but we
shall never meet this great duty by simply asking that it may be done.
There is a cross to be taken up, before we can enjoy the fruition of our
hope and faith.
Dost thou "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind?" This command includes much--even the
surrender of all merely material sensation, affection, and worship. This
is the El Dorado of Christianity. It involves the Science of Life, and
recognizes only the divine control of Spirit, wherein Soul is our master,
and material sense and human will have no place.
Are you willing to leave all for Christ, for Truth, and so be counted
among sinners? No! Do you really desire to attain this point? No!
Then why make long prayers about it, and ask to be Christians, since you
care not to tread in the footsteps of our dear Master? If unwilling to
follow His example, wherefore pray with the lips that you may be
partakers of His nature? Consistent prayer is the desire to do right.
Prayer means that we desire to, and will, walk in the light so far as we
receive it, even though with bleeding footsteps, and waiting patiently on
the Lord, will leave our real desires to be rewarded by Him.
The world must grow to the spiritual understanding of prayer. If good
enough to profit by Jesus' cup of earthly sorrows, God will sustain us
under these sorrows. Until we are thus divinely qualified, and willing
to drink His cup, millions of vain repetitions will never pour into
prayer the unction of Spirit, in demonstration of power, and "with signs
following." Christian Science reveals a necessity for overcoming the
world, the flesh and evil, and thus destroying all error.
Seeking is not sufficient. It is striving which enables us to enter.
Spiritual attainments open the door to a higher understanding of the
divine Life.
One of the forms of worship in Thibet is to carry a praying-machine
through the streets, and stop at the doors to earn a penny by grinding
out a prayer; whereas civilization pays for clerical prayers, in lofty
edifices. Is the difference very great, after all?
Experience teaches us that we do not always receive the blessings we ask
for in prayer.
There is some misapprehension of the source and means of all goodness and
blessedness, or we should certainly receive what we ask for. The
Scriptures say: "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye
may consume it upon your lusts." What we desire and ask for it is not
always best for us to receive. In this case infinite Love will not grant
the request. Do you ask Wisdom to be merciful and not punish sin? Then
"ye ask amiss." Without punishment, sin would multiply. Jesus' prayer,
"forgive us our debts," specified also the terms of forgiveness. When
forgiving the adulterous woman He said, "Go, and sin no more."
A magistrate sometimes remits the penalty, but this may be no moral
benefit to the criminal; and at best, it only saves him from one form of
punishment. The moral law, which has the right to acquit or condemn,
always demands restitution, before mortals can "go up higher." Broken
law brings penalty, in order to compel this progress.
Mere legal pardon (and there is no other, for divine Principle never
pardons our sins or mistakes till they are corrected) leaves the offender
free to repeat the offense; if, indeed, he has not already suffered
sufficiently from vice to make him turn from it with loathing. Truth
bestows no pardon upon error, but wipes it out in the most effectual
manner. Jesus suffered for our sins, not to annul the divine sentence
against an individual's sin, but to show that sin must bring inevitable
suffering.
Petitions only bring to mortals the results of their own faith. We know
that a desire for holiness is requisite in order to gain it; but if we
desire holiness above all else, we shall sacrifice everything for it. We
must be willing to do this, that we may walk securely in the only
practical road to holiness. Prayer alone cannot change the unalterable
Truth, or give us an understanding of it; but prayer coupled with a
fervent habitual desire to know and do the will of God will bring us into
all Truth. Such a desire has little need of audible expression. It is
best expressed in thought and life.
APPENDIX E
Reverend Heber Newton on Christian Science:
To begin, then, at the beginning, Christian Science accepts the work of
healing sickness as an integral part of the discipleship of Jesus Christ.
In Christ it finds, what the Church has always recognized, theoretically,
though it has practically ignored the fact--the Great Physician. That
Christ healed the sick, we none of us question. It stands plainly upon
the record. This ministry of healing was too large a part of His work to
be left out from any picture of that life. Such service was not an
incident of His career--it was an essential element of that career. It
was an integral factor in His mission. The Evangelists leave us no
possibility of confusion on this point. Co-equal with his work of
instruction and inspiration was His work of healing.
The records make it equally clear that the Master laid His charge upon
His disciples to do as He had done. "When He had called unto Him His
twelve disciples, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them
out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." In
sending them forth, "He commanded them, saying, . . . As ye go,
preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse
the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons."
That the twelve disciples undertook to do the Master's work of healing,
and that they, in their measure, succeeded, seems beyond question. They
found in themselves the same power that the Master found in Himself, and
they used it as He had used His power. The record of The Acts of the
Apostles, if at all trustworthy history, shows that they, too, healed the
sick.
Beyond the circle of the original twelve, it is equally clear that the
early disciples believed themselves charged with the same mission, and
that they sought to fulfil it. The records of the early Church make it
indisputable that powers of healing were recognized as among the gifts of
the Spirit. St. Paul's letters render it certain that these gifts were
not a privilege of the original twelve, merely, but that they were the
heritage into which all the disciples entered.
Beyond the era of the primitive Church, through several generations, the
early Christians felt themselves called to the same ministry of healing,
and enabled with the same secret of power. Through wellnigh three
centuries, the gifts of healing appear to have been, more or less,
recognized and exercised in the Church. Through those generations,
however, there was a gradual disuse of this power, following upon a
failing recognition of its possession. That which was originally the
rule became the exception. By degrees, the sense of authority and power
to heal passed out from the consciousness of the Church. It ceased to be
a sign of the indwelling Spirit. For fifteen centuries, the recognition
of this authority and power has been altogether exceptional. Here and
there, through the history of these centuries, there have been those who
have entered into this belief of their own privilege and duty, and have
used the gift which they recognized. The Church has never been left
without a line of witnesses to this aspect of the discipleship of Christ.
But she has come to accept it as the normal order of things that what was
once the rule in the Christian Church should be now only the exception.
Orthodoxy has framed a theory of the words of Jesus to account for this
strange departure of His Church from them. It teaches us to believe that
His example was not meant to be followed, in this respect, by all His
disciples. The power of healing which was in Him was a purely
exceptional power. It was used as an evidence of His divine mission. It
was a miraculous gift. The gift of working miracles was not bestowed
upon His Church at large. His original disciples, the twelve apostles,
received this gift, as a necessity of the critical epoch of Christianity
--the founding of the Church. Traces of the power lingered on, in
weakening activity, until they gradually ceased, and the normal condition
of the Church was entered upon, in which miracles are no longer possible.
We accept this, unconsciously, as the true state of things in
Christianity. But it is a conception which will not bear a moment's
examination. There is not the slightest suggestion upon record that
Christ set any limit to this charge which He gave His disciples. On the
contrary, there are not lacking hints that He looked for the possession
and exercise of this power wherever His spirit breathed in men.
Even if the concluding paragraph of St. Mark's Gospel were a later
appendix, it may none the less have been a faithful echo of words of the
Master, as it certainly is a trustworthy record of the belief of the
early Christians as to the thought of Jesus concerning His followers. In
that interesting passage, Jesus, after His death, appeared to the eleven,
and formally commissioned them, again, to take up His work in the world;
bidding them, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature." "And these signs," He tells them, "shall follow them that
believe"--not the apostles only, but "them that believe," without limit
of time; "in My name they shall cast out devils . . . they shall lay
hands on the sick and they shall recover." The concluding discourse to
the disciples, recorded in the Gospel according to St. John, affirms the
same expectation on the part of Jesus; emphasizing it in His solemn way:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me, the works that
I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do."
APPENDIX F
Few will deny that an intelligence apart from man formed and governs the
spiritual universe and man; and this intelligence is the eternal Mind,
and neither matter nor man created this intelligence and divine
Principle; nor can this Principle produce aught unlike itself. All that
we term sin, sickness, and death is comprised in the belief of matter.
The realm of the real is spiritual; the opposite of Spirit is matter; and
the opposite of the real is unreal or material. Matter is an error of
statement, for there is no matter. This error of premises leads to error
of conclusion in every statement of matter as a basis. Nothing we can
say or believe regarding matter is true, except that matter is unreal,
simply a belief that has its beginning and ending.
The conservative firm called matter and mind God never formed. The
unerring and eternal Mind destroys this imaginary copartnership, formed
only to be dissolved in a manner and at a period unknown. This
copartnership is obsolete. Placed under the microscope of metaphysics
matter disappears. Only by understanding there are not two, matter and
mind, is a logical and correct conclusion obtained by either one.
Science gathers not grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. Intelligence
never produced non-intelligence, such as matter: the immortal never
produced mortality, good never resulted in evil. The science of Mind
shows conclusively that matter is a myth. Metaphysics are above physics,
and drag not matter, or what is termed that, into one of its premises or
conclusions. Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges
the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul. These ideas are perfectly
tangible and real to consciousness, and they have this advantage--they
are eternal. Mind and its thoughts comprise the whole of God, the
universe, and of man. Reason and revelation coincide with this
statement, and support its proof every hour, for nothing is harmonious or
eternal that is not spiritual: the realization of this will bring out
objects from a higher source of thought; hence more beautiful and
immortal.
The fact of spiritualization produces results in striking contrast to the
farce of materialization: the one produces the results of chastity and
purity, the other the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of
sensualism and impurity.
The exalting and healing effects of metaphysics show their fountain.
Nothing in pathology has exceeded the application of metaphysics.
Through mind alone we have prevented disease and preserved health. In
cases of chronic and acute diseases, in their severest forms, we have
changed the secretions, renewed structure, and restored health; have
elongated shortened limbs, relaxed rigid muscles, made cicatrized joints
supple; restored carious bones to healthy conditions, renewed that which
is termed the lost substance of the lungs; and restored healthy
organizations where disease was organic instead of functional.
MRS. EDDY IN ERROR
I feel almost sure that Mrs. Eddy's inspiration--works are getting out of
repair. I think so because they made some errors in a statement which
she uttered through the press on the 17th of January. Not large ones,
perhaps, still it is a friend's duty to straighten such things out and
get them right when he can. Therefore I will put my other duties aside
for a moment and undertake this helpful service. She said as follows:
"In view of the circulation of certain criticisms from the pen of Mark
Twain, I submit the following statement:
"It is a fact, well understood, that I begged the students who first gave
me the endearing appellative 'mother' not to name me thus. But, without
my consent, that word spread like wildfire. I still must think the name
is not applicable to me. I stand in relation to this century as a
Christian discoverer, founder, and leader. I regard self-deification as
blasphemous; I may be more loved, but I am less lauded, pampered,
provided for, and cheered than others before me--and wherefore? Because
Christian Science is not yet popular, and I refuse adulation.
"My visit to the Mother-Church after it was built and dedicated pleased
me, and the situation was satisfactory. The dear members wanted to greet
me with escort and the ringing of bells, but I declined, and went alone
in my carriage to the church, entered it, and knelt in thanks upon the
steps of its altar. There the foresplendor of the beginnings of truth
fell mysteriously upon my spirit. I believe in one Christ, teach one
Christ, know of but one Christ. I believe in but one incarnation, one
Mother Mary, and know I am not that one, and never claimed to be. It
suffices me to learn the Science of the Scriptures relative to this
subject.
"Christian Scientists have no quarrel with Protestants, Catholics, or any
other sect. They need to be understood as following the divine Principle
God, Love and not imagined to be unscientific worshippers of a human
being.
"In the aforesaid article, of which I have seen only extracts, Mark
Twain's wit was not wasted In certain directions. Christian Science
eschews divine rights in human beings. If the individual governed human
consciousness, my statement of Christian Science would be disproved, but
to understand the spiritual idea is essential to demonstrate Science and
its pure monotheism--one God, one Christ, no idolatry, no human
propaganda. Jesus taught and proved that what feeds a few feeds all.
His life-work subordinated the material to the spiritual, and He left
this legacy of truth to mankind. His metaphysics is not the sport of
philosophy, religion, or Science; rather it is the pith and finale of
them all.
"I have not the inspiration or aspiration to be a first or second
Virgin-Mother--her duplicate, antecedent, or subsequent. What I am
remains to be proved by the good I do. We need much humility, wisdom,
and love to perform the functions of foreshadowing and foretasting heaven
within us. This glory is molten in the furnace of affliction."
She still thinks the name of Our Mother not applicable to her; and she is
also able to remember that it distressed her when it was conferred upon
her, and that she begged to have it suppressed. Her memory is at fault
here. If she will take her By-laws, and refer to Section 1 of Article
XXII., written with her own hand--she will find that she has reserved
that title to herself, and is so pleased with it, and so--may we say
jealous?--about it, that she threatens with excommunication any sister
Scientist who shall call herself by it. This is that Section 1:
"The Title of Mother. In the year 1895 loyal Christian Scientists had
given to the author of their text-book, the Founder of Christian Science,
the individual, endearing term of Mother. Therefore, if a student of
Christian Science shall apply this title, either to herself or to others,
except as the term for kinship according to the flesh, it shall be
regarded by the Church as an indication of disrespect for their Pastor
Emeritus, and unfitness to be a member of the Mother-Church."
Mrs. Eddy is herself the Mother-Church--its powers and authorities are in
her possession solely--and she can abolish that title whenever it may
please her to do so. She has only to command her people, wherever they
may be in the earth, to use it no more, and it will never be uttered
again. She is aware of this.
It may be that she "refuses adulation" when she is not awake, but when
she is awake she encourages it and propagates it in that museum called
"Our Mother's Room," in her Church in Boston. She could abolish that
institution with a word, if she wanted to. She is aware of that. I will
say a further word about the museum presently.
Further down the column, her memory is unfaithful again:
"I believe in . . . but one Mother Mary, and know I am not that one,
and never claimed to be."
At a session of the National Christian Science Association, held in the
city of New York on the 27th of May, 1890, the secretary was "instructed
to send to our Mother greetings and words of affection from her assembled
children."
Her telegraphic response was read to the Association at next day's
meeting:
"All hail! He hath filled the hungry with good things and the sick hath
He not sent empty away.--MOTHER MARY."
Which Mother Mary is this one? Are there two? If so, she is both of
them; for, when she signed this telegram in this satisfied and
unprotesting way, the Mother-title which she was going to so strenuously
object to, and put from her with humility, and seize with both hands, and
reserve as her sole property, and protect her monopoly of it with a stern
By-law, while recognizing with diffidence that it was "not applicable" to
her (then and to-day)--that Mother--title was not yet born, and would not
be offered to her until five years later. The date of the above "Mother
Mary" is 1890; the "individual, endearing title of Mother" was given her
"in 1895"--according to her own testimony. See her By-law quoted above.
In his opening Address to that Convention of 1890, the President
recognized this Mary--our Mary-and abolished all previous ones. He said:
"There is but one Moses, one Jesus; and there is but one Mary."
The confusions being now dispersed, we have this clarified result:
Were had been a Moses at one time, and only one; there had been a Jesus
at one time, and only one; there is a Mary and "only one." She is not a
Has Been, she is an Is--the "Author of Science and Health; and we cannot
ignore her."
1. In 1890, there was but one Mother Mary. The President said so.
2. Mrs. Eddy was that one. She said so, in signing the telegram.
3. Mrs. Eddy was not that one for she says so, in her Associated Press
utterance of January 17th.
4. And has "never claimed to be that one"--unless the signature to the
telegram is a claim.
Thus it stands proven and established that she is that Mary and isn't,
and thought she was and knows she wasn't. That much is clear.
She is also "The Mother," by the election of 1895, and did not want the
title, and thinks it is not applicable to her, end will excommunicate any
one that tries to take it away from her. So that is clear.
I think that the only really troublesome confusion connected with these
particular matters has arisen from the name Mary. Much vexation, much
misunderstanding, could have been avoided if Mrs. Eddy had used some of
her other names in place of that one. "Mother Mary" was certain to stir
up discussion. It would have been much better if she had signed the
telegram "Mother Baker"; then there would have been no Biblical
competition, and, of course, that is a thing to avoid. But it is not too
late, yet.
I wish to break in here with a parenthesis, and then take up this
examination of Mrs. Eddy's Claim of January 17th again.
The history of her "Mother Mary" telegram--as told to me by one who ought
to be a very good authority--is curious and interesting. The telegram
ostensibly quotes verse 53 from the "Magnificat," but really makes some
pretty formidable changes in it. This is St. Luke's version:
"He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He hath sent
empty away."
This is "Mother Mary's" telegraphed version:
"He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the sick hath He not
sent empty away."
To judge by the Official Report, the bursting of this bombshell in that
massed convention of trained Christians created no astonishment, since it
caused no remark, and the business of the convention went tranquilly on,
thereafter, as if nothing had happened.
Did those people detect those changes? We cannot know. I think they
must have noticed them, the wording of St. Luke's verse being as
familiar to all Christians as is the wording of the Beatitudes; and I
think that the reason the new version provoked no surprise and no comment
was, that the assemblage took it for a "Key"--a spiritualized explanation
of verse 53, newly sent down from heaven through Mrs. Eddy. For all
Scientists study their Bibles diligently, and they know their Magnificat.
I believe that their confidence in the authenticity of Mrs. Eddy's
inspirations is so limitless and so firmly established that no change,
however violent, which she might make in a Bible text could disturb their
composure or provoke from them a protest.
Her improved rendition of verse 53 went into the convention's report and
appeared in a New York paper the next day. The (at that time) Scientist
whom I mentioned a minute ago, and who had not been present at the
convention, saw it and marvelled; marvelled and was indignant--indignant
with the printer or the telegrapher, for making so careless and so
dreadful an error. And greatly distressed, too; for, of course, the
newspaper people would fall foul of it, and be sarcastic, and make fun of
it, and have a blithe time over it, and be properly thankful for the
chance. It shows how innocent he was; it shows that he did not know the
limitations of newspaper men in the matter of Biblical knowledge. The
new verse 53 raised no insurrection in the press; in fact, it was not
even remarked upon; I could have told him the boys would not know there
was anything the matter with it. I have been a newspaper man myself, and
in those days I had my limitations like the others.
The Scientist hastened to Concord and told Mrs. Eddy what a disastrous
mistake had been made, but he found to his bewilderment that she was
tranquil about it, and was not proposing to correct it. He was not able
to get her to promise to make a correction. He asked her secretary if he
had heard aright when the telegram was dictated to him; the secretary
said he had, and took the filed copy of it and verified its authenticity
by comparing it with the stenographic notes.
Mrs. Eddy did make the correction, two months later, in her official
organ. It attracted no attention among the Scientists; and, naturally,
none elsewhere, for that periodical's circulation was practically
confined to disciples of the cult.
That is the tale as it was told to me by an ex-Scientist. Verse 53
--renovated and spiritualized--had a narrow escape from a tremendous
celebrity. The newspaper men would have made it as famous as the
assassination of Caesar, but for their limitations.
To return to the Claim. I find myself greatly embarrassed by Mrs. Eddy's
remark: "I regard self-deification as blasphemous." If she is right
about that, I have written a half-ream of manuscript this past week which
I must not print, either in the book which I am writing, or elsewhere:
for it goes into that very matter with extensive elaboration, citing, in
detail, words and acts of Mrs. Eddy's which seem to me to prove that she
is a faithful and untiring worshipper of herself, and has carried
self-deification to a length which has not been before ventured in ages.
If ever. There is not room enough in this chapter for that Survey, but I
can epitomize a portion of it here.
With her own untaught and untrained mind, and without outside help, she
has erected upon a firm and lasting foundation the most minutely perfect,
and wonderful, and smoothly and exactly working, and best safe-guarded
system of government that has yet been devised in the world, as I
believe, and as I am sure I could prove if I had room for my documentary
evidences here.
It is a despotism (on this democratic soil); a sovereignty more absolute
than the Roman Papacy, more absolute than the Russian Czarship; it has
not a single power, not a shred of authority, legislative or executive,
which is not lodged solely in the sovereign; all its dreams, its
functions, its energies, have a single object, a single reason for
existing, and only the one--to build to the sky the glory of the
sovereign, and keep it bright to the end of time.
Mrs. Eddy is the sovereign; she devised that great place for herself, she
occupies that throne.
In 1895, she wrote a little primer, a little body of autocratic laws,
called the Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and put those
laws in force, in permanence. Her government is all there; all in that
deceptively innocent-looking little book, that cunning little devilish
book, that slumbering little brown volcano, with hell in its bowels. In
that book she has planned out her system, and classified and defined its
purposes and powers.
MAIN PARTS OF THE MACHINE
A Supreme Church. At Boston.
Branch Churches. All over the world
One Pastor for the whole of them: to wit, her book, Science and Health.
Term of the book's office--forever.
In every C.S. pulpit, two "Readers," a man and a woman. No talkers, no
preachers, in any Church-readers only. Readers of the Bible and her
books--no others. No commentators allowed to write or print.
A Church Service. She has framed it--for all the C.S. Churches
--selected its readings, its prayers, and the hymns to be used, and has
appointed the order of procedure. No changes permitted.
A Creed. She wrote it. All C.S. Churches must subscribe to it. No
other permitted.
A Treasury. At Boston. She carries the key.
A C.S. Book--Publishing House. For books approved by her. No others
permitted.
Journals and Magazines. These are organs of hers, and are controlled by
her.
A College. For teaching C.S.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE MACHINE'S POWERS AND DIGNITIES
Supreme Church.
Pastor Emeritus--Mrs. Eddy.
Board of Directors.
Board of Education.
Board of Finance.
College Faculty.
Various Committees.
Treasurer.
Clerk.
First Members (of the Supreme Church).
Members of the Supreme Church.
It looks fair, it looks real, but it is all a fiction.
Even the little "Pastor Emeritus" is a fiction. Instead of being merely
an honorary and ornamental official, Mrs. Eddy is the only official in
the entire body that has the slightest power. In her Manual, she has
provided a prodigality of ways and forms whereby she can rid herself of
any functionary in the government whenever she wants to. The officials
are all shadows, save herself; she is the only reality. She allows no
one to hold office more than a year--no one gets a chance to become
over-popular or over-useful, and dangerous. "Excommunication" is the
favorite penalty-it is threatened at every turn. It is evidently the pet
dread and terror of the Church's membership.
The member who thinks, without getting his thought from Mrs. Eddy before
uttering it, is banished permanently. One or two kinds of sinners can
plead their way back into the fold, but this one, never. To think--in
the Supreme Church--is the New Unpardonable Sin.
To nearly every severe and fierce rule, Mrs. Eddy adds this rivet: "This
By-law shall not be changed without the consent of the Pastor Emeritus."
Mrs. Eddy is the entire Supreme Church, in her own person, in the matter
of powers and authorities.
Although she has provided so many ways of getting rid of unsatisfactory
members and officials, she was still afraid she might have left a
life-preserver lying around somewhere, therefore she devised a rule to
cover that defect. By applying it, she can excommunicate (and this is
perpetual again) every functionary connected with the Supreme Church, and
every one of the twenty-five thousand members of that Church, at an
hour's notice--and do it all by herself without anybody's help.
By authority of this astonishing By-law, she has only to say a person
connected with that Church is secretly practicing hypnotism or mesmerism;
whereupon, immediate excommunication, without a hearing, is his portion!
She does not have to order a trial and produce evidence--her accusation
is all that is necessary.
Where is the Pope? and where the Czar? As the ballad says:
"Ask of the winds that far away
With fragments strewed the sea!"
The Branch Church's pulpit is occupied by two "Readers." Without them
the Branch Church is as dead as if its throat had been cut. To have
control, then, of the Readers, is to have control of the Branch Churches.
Mrs. Eddy has that control--a control wholly without limit, a control
shared with no one.
1. No Reader can be appointed to any Church in the Christian Science
world without her express approval.
2. She can summarily expel from his or her place any Reader, at home or
abroad, by a mere letter of dismissal, over her signature, and without
furnishing any reason for it, to either the congregation or the Reader.
Thus she has as absolute control over all Branch Churches as she has over
the Supreme Church. This power exceeds the Pope's.
In simple truth, she is the only absolute sovereign in all Christendom.
The authority of the other sovereigns has limits, hers has none, none
whatever. And her yoke does not fret, does not offend. Many of the
subjects of the other monarchs feel their yoke, and are restive under it;
their loyalty is insincere. It is not so with this one's human property;
their loyalty is genuine, earnest, sincere, enthusiastic. The sentiment
which they feel for her is one which goes out in sheer perfection to no
other occupant of a throne; for it is love, pure from doubt, envy,
exaction, fault-seeking, a love whose sun has no spot--that form of love,
strong, great, uplifting, limitless, whose vast proportions are
compassable by no word but one, the prodigious word, Worship. And it is
not as a human being that her subjects worship her, but as a supernatural
one, a divine one, one who has comradeship with God, and speaks by His
voice.
Mrs. Eddy has herself created all these personal grandeurs and
autocracies--with others which I have not (in this article) mentioned.
They place her upon an Alpine solitude and supremacy of power and
spectacular show not hitherto attained by any other self-seeking enslaver
disguised in the Christian name, and they persuade me that, although she
may regard "self-deification as blasphemous," she is as fond of it as I
am of pie.
She knows about "Our Mother's Room" in the Supreme Church in Boston
--above referred to--for she has been in it. In a recently published
North American Review article, I quoted a lady as saying Mrs. Eddy's
portrait could be seen there in a shrine, lit by always-burning lights,
and that C.S. disciples came and worshiped it. That remark hurt the
feelings of more than one Scientist. They said it was not true, and
asked me to correct it. I comply with pleasure. Whether the portrait
was there four years ago or not, it is not there now, for I have
inquired. The only object in the shrine now, and lit by electrics--and
worshiped--is an oil-portrait of the horse-hair chair Mrs. Eddy used to
sit in when she was writing Science and Health! It seems to me that
adulation has struck bottom, here.
Mrs. Eddy knows about that. She has been there, she has seen it, she has
seen the worshippers. She could abolish that sarcasm with a word. She
withholds the word. Once more I seem to recognize in her exactly the
same appetite for self-deification that I have for pie. We seem to be
curiously alike; for the love of self-deification is really only the
spiritual form of the material appetite for pie, and nothing could be
more strikingly Christian-Scientifically "harmonious."
I note this phrase:
"Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings."
"Rights" is vague; I do not know what it means there. Mrs. Eddy is not
well acquainted with the English language, and she is seldom able to say
in it what she is trying to say. She has no ear for the exact word, and
does not often get it. "Rights." Does it mean "honors?" "attributes?"
"Eschews." This is another umbrella where there should be a torch; it
does not illumine the sentence, it only deepens the shadows. Does she
mean "denies?" "refuses?" "forbids?" or something in that line? Does she
mean:
"Christian Science denies divine honors to human beings?" Or:
"Christian Science refuses to recognize divine attributes in human
beings?" Or:
"Christian Science forbids the worship of human beings?"
The bulk of the succeeding sentence is to me a tunnel, but, when I emerge
at this end of it, I seem to come into daylight. Then I seem to
understand both sentences--with this result:
"Christian Science recognizes but one God, forbids the worship of human
beings, and refuses to recognize the possession of divine attributes by
any member of the race."
I am subject to correction, but I think that that is about what Mrs. Eddy
was intending to convey. Has her English--which is always difficult to
me--beguiled me into misunderstanding the following remark, which she
makes (calling herself "we," after an old regal fashion of hers) in her
preface to her Miscellaneous Writings?
"While we entertain decided views as to the best method for elevating the
race physically, morally, and spiritually, and shall express these views
as duty demands, we shall claim no especial gift from our divine organ,
no supernatural power."
Was she meaning to say:
"Although I am of divine origin and gifted with supernatural power, I
shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of
elevating the race?"
If she had left out the word "our," she might then seem to say:
"I claim no especial or unusual degree of divine origin--"
Which is awkward--most awkward; for one either has a divine origin or
hasn't; shares in it, degrees of it, are surely impossible. The idea of
crossed breeds in cattle is a thing we can entertain, for we are used to
it, and it is possible; but the idea of a divine mongrel is unthinkable.
Well, then, what does she mean? I am sure I do not know, for certain.
It is the word "our" that makes all the trouble. With the "our" in, she
is plainly saying "my divine origin." The word "from" seems to be
intended to mean "on account of." It has to mean that or nothing, if
"our" is allowed to stay. The clause then says:
"I shall claim no especial gift on account of my divine origin."
And I think that the full sentence was intended to mean what I have
already suggested:
"Although I am of divine origin, and gifted with supernatural power, I
shall not draw upon these resources in determining the best method of
elevating the race."
When Mrs. Eddy copyrighted that Preface seven years ago, she had long
been used to regarding herself as a divine personage. I quote from Mr.
F. W. Peabody's book:
"In the Christian Science Journal for April, 1889, when it was her
property, and published by her, it was claimed for her, and with her
sanction, that she was equal with Jesus, and elaborate effort was made to
establish the claim."
"Mrs. Eddy has distinctly authorized the claim in her behalf, that she
herself was the chosen successor to and equal of Jesus."
The following remark in that April number, quoted by Mr. Peabody,
indicates that her claim had been previously made, and had excited
"horror" among some "good people":
"Now, a word about the horror many good people have of our making the
Author of Science and Health 'equal with Jesus.'"
Surely, if it had excited horror in Mrs. Eddy also, she would have
published a disclaimer. She owned the paper; she could say what she
pleased in its columns. Instead of rebuking her editor, she lets him
rebuke those "good people" for objecting to the claim.
These things seem to throw light upon those words, "our [my] divine
origin."
It may be that "Christian Science eschews divine rights in human beings,"
and forbids worship of any but "one God, one Christ"; but, if that is the
case, it looks as if Mrs. Eddy is a very unsound Christian Scientist,
and needs disciplining. I believe she has a serious malady
--"self-deification"; and that it will be well to have one of the
experts demonstrate over it.
Meantime, let her go on living--for my sake. Closely examined,
painstakingly studied, she is easily the most interesting person on the
planet, and, in several ways, as easily the most extraordinary woman that
was ever born upon it.
P.S.--Since I wrote the foregoing, Mr. McCrackan's article appeared (in
the March number of the North American Review). Before his article
appeared--that is to say, during December, January, and February--I had
written a new book, a character-portrait of Mrs. Eddy, drawn from her own
acts and words, and it was then--together with the three brief articles
previously published in the North American Review--ready to be delivered
to the printer for issue in book form. In that book, by accident and
good luck, I have answered the objections made by Mr. McCrackan to my
views, and therefore do not need to add an answer here. Also, in it I
have corrected certain misstatements of mine which he has noticed, and
several others which he has not referred to. There are one or two
important matters of opinion upon which he and I are not in disagreement;
but there are others upon which we must continue to disagree, I suppose;
indeed, I know we must; for instance, he believes Mrs. Eddy wrote Science
and Health, whereas I am quite sure I can convince a person unhampered by
predilections that she did not.
As concerns one considerable matter I hope to convert him. He believes
Mrs. Eddy's word; in his article he cites her as a witness, and takes her
testimony at par; but if he will make an excursion through my book when
it comes out, and will dispassionately examine her testimonies as there
accumulated, I think he will in candor concede that she is by a large
percentage the most erratic and contradictory and untrustworthy witness
that has occupied the stand since the days of the lamented Ananias.
CONCLUSION
Broadly speaking, the hostiles reject and repudiate all the pretensions
of Christian Science Christianity. They affirm that it has added nothing
new to Christianity; that it can do nothing that Christianity could not
do and was not doing before Christian Science was born.
In that case is there no field for the new Christianity, no opportunity
for usefulness, precious usefulness, great and distinguished usefulness?
I think there is. I am far from being confident that it can fill it, but
I will indicate that unoccupied field--without charge--and if it can
conquer it, it will deserve the praise and gratitude of the Christian
world, and will get it, I am sure.
The present Christianity makes an excellent private Christian, but its
endeavors to make an excellent public one go for nothing, substantially.
This is an honest nation--in private life. The American Christian is a
straight and clean and honest man, and in his private commerce with his
fellows can be trusted to stand faithfully by the principles of honor and
honesty imposed upon him by his religion. But the moment he comes
forward to exercise a public trust he can be confidently counted upon to
betray that trust in nine cases out of ten, if "party loyalty" shall
require it.
If there are two tickets in the field in his city, one composed of honest
men and the other of notorious blatherskites and criminals, he will not
hesitate to lay his private Christian honor aside and vote for the
blatherskites if his "party honor" shall exact it. His Christianity is
of no use to him and has no influence upon him when he is acting in a
public capacity. He has sound and sturdy private morals, but he has no
public ones. In the last great municipal election in New York, almost a
complete one-half of the votes representing 3,500,000 Christians were
cast for a ticket that had hardly a man on it whose earned and proper
place was outside of a jail. But that vote was present at church next
Sunday the same as ever, and as unconscious of its perfidy as if nothing
had happened.
Our Congresses consist of Christians. In their private life they are
true to every obligation of honor; yet in every session they violate them
all, and do it without shame; because honor to party is above honor to
themselves. It is an accepted law of public life that in it a man may
soil his honor in the interest of party expediency--must do it when
party expediency requires it. In private life those men would bitterly
resent--and justly--any insinuation that it would not be safe to leave
unwatched money within their reach; yet you could not wound their
feelings by reminding them that every time they vote ten dollars to the
pension appropriation nine of it is stolen money and they the marauders.
They have filched the money to take care of the party; they believe it
was right to do it; they do not see how their private honor is affected;
therefore their consciences are clear and at rest. By vote they do
wrongful things every day, in the party interest, which they could not be
persuaded to do in private life. In the interest of party expediency
they give solemn pledges, they make solemn compacts; in the interest of
party expediency they repudiate them without a blush. They would not
dream of committing these strange crimes in private life.
Now then, can Christian Science introduce the Congressional Blush? There
are Christian Private Morals, but there are no Christian Public Morals,
at the polls, or in Congress or anywhere else--except here and there and
scattered around like lost comets in the solar system. Can Christian
Science persuade the nation and Congress to throw away their public
morals and use none but their private ones henceforth in all their
activities, both public and private?
I do not think so; but no matter about me: there is the field--a grand
one, a splendid one, a sublime one, and absolutely unoccupied. Has
Christian Science confidence enough in itself to undertake to enter in
and try to possess it?
Make the effort, Christian Science; it is a most noble cause, and it
might succeed. It could succeed. Then we should have a new literature,
with romances entitled, How To Be an Honest Congressman Though a
Christian; How To Be a Creditable Citizen Though a Christian.
End of Project Gutenberg's Christian Science, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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